Get the Kids Involved Part II

So another Saturday with no plans.

I only had my daughter helping me this time as my son thought it was more important to get more gold bricks in his Lego Marvel Superhero game. 

So after the success of our last little scenery project it was time to tackle something bigger, so it's time to start the 4x4 board I mentioned in my last blog. The board was already made and is a 4x4 sheet of hardboard braced with a 2x2 baton frame. I also had a large bag of polystyrene bits. So out came the glue and knife (my friend has my hot wire cutter) and off we went. A quick note at this point, cutting polystyrene with knife is messy and doesn't leave the straight lines of a wire cutter!

I left her to it (had some important washing up to do), and by the time I got back she had nearly finished the gluing! 

We used pieces of polystyrene and they had to be held down, so anything heavy we could find was used. It would have been much better to use 1 large of polystyrene but we didn't have one so we just got on with it.

It was about this time I noticed how messy it was getting, so in everyone's best interest we moved it outside. 

This is it so far.

We used good old P.V.A mixed with water and any old paper we could find, I knew all the adverts they keep posting through my door would come in handy somewhere. 

We used a big old paint brush and started sticking bits of  torn up letters, flyers and magazines all over one side, the other side still be weighed down was drying, P.V.A can take a while to set and the temperature was not helping. On some of it we used large sheet to cover the area quicker, its not normally a good idea to do it like this, but as we were going to cover the whole thing in sand so it didn't matter. 

 At some points my daughter wanted to take pictures, so I had to get my hands dirty and do some! As you can see some the polystyrene has pen marks on it, this is where the rock effect we done on the last piece of scenery will go, and the big gap down the middle is going to be a river. 

While the glue was still wet we added sand. Top tip, go to Toys R Us or some other toy shop and buy a massive bag of sand for £2.00, it will last forever! We poured the sand over the bits that were not going to be rocks and called it a day.

   

Not bad for a few hours work, and I have to say again, if you have any scenery that needs building, get the kids to help, they love it, it speeds up the whole process and they do learn really quickly. It also helps their creativity and they come up with really good ideas, the bridge is going to a draw bridge! 

  That's it for now, will get back to you soon, with a challenge I took up at my games club and hopefully some Menoth (they are coming, honest). 

Thanks for stopping by and hope to see you soon.