Book dominoes and marshmallow construction, oh my!
This hour-long drop-in Summer Reading Club program for ages 6-12 was all about the building (and destroying).
The scene was barely controlled chaos, with 30+ kids (and various parents) squashed into a small children’s area in a small library.
The first activity was book dominoes – we gathered picture books and made a series of book dominoes (with varying degrees of success). Given the cramped space, this activity was less successful than it might’ve been, as we didn’t have a lot of room to build long book cascades.
The second activity was much more popular – marshmallow construction! We used miniature marshmallows and toothpicks to build marshmallow structures.
When attempting this craft, make sure you have more toothpicks on hand than you ever thought you could need. We barely had enough toothpicks to keep up with everyone’s impressive feats of confectionery construction. Also – consider handing out the supplies, rather than allowing the children to help themselves. This will help ensure that you don’t end up with any marshmallow or toothpick hoarders (which of course happened to me).
The marshmallow construction ran on a bit longer than anticipated, as the kids were deeply engrossed in the activity and I hated to interrupt their creativity.
Although the kids had a blast building their towers, the clean up process was a bit of a headache. We didn’t have tables to build on, so the kids built on the floor, which meant a lot of marshmallows ended up ground into the carpet…delicious souvenirs of our madcap afternoon…. 🙂