Realising the great joy certain things brought me as a kid and realising that those things are beyond the reach of my kids ... Gah.
A happy story made me sad; I'm too easily depressed.
Aside: email games seems really retro.
Realising the great joy certain things brought me as a kid and realising that those things are beyond the reach of my kids ... Gah.
A happy story made me sad; I'm too easily depressed.
Aside: email games seems really retro.
http://blog.jgc.org/2011/06/making-ponyo-or-putt-putt-boat.h...
Fun to do if you have kids.
It's funny, so often with these makes there are hidden costs. Silver spray can is quite expensive where I am. Of course you can skip that part.
I'm a big believer in not throwing stuff away that could be potentially useful.
Food colouring cost money, as does flours, but you can make your own from plants/cereals if you really feel the need.
Either you have enough money to buy some glue, or you can spend time teaching your kids how to make it. If your kids have an impressive enough attention span, you'll be teaching them something by making the glue, even more if you make the flour!
Money just makes things convient/easy. You're trying to teach, lack of money helps that.
Not useful for sealing submerged parts of a shiny metal structure though.
>Either you have enough money to buy some glue, or you can spend time teaching your kids how to make it.
This is how it seems to go. However practically you need grain, so you need a trip to a field with grain in, which would be a bus ride, which would cost more than walking to the shops to buy glue.
Once you're at the field (assuming you have permission), you'll need to gather the grain. Scythe? Sacks? I know from experience that you get little flour from the grain you can hand collect and grind with a couple of flat stones in a couple of hours. Were talking young kids here too, getting them to gather grain won't be much fun when they're moaning "I thought we were making junk boats ... can't we make our boats".
I'm not trying to be completely obstructive (honest!) - making our own epoxy sounds more fun (but again, hidden costs) - but perhaps these things will come later.
That is kind of what I meant by hidden costs.
To recapitulate often one doesn't realise the benefit of the resources one has available. Making a piece of furniture for example someone will say "use your drill press", "use a nail gun", "use an orbital sander", etc.: obviously once one has these things the usage cost is near zero but the acquisition cost is high. These acquisition costs get hidden.
Dollar stores are great for this stuff. And office supply stores can be especially nice during back-to-school sales. And wander down every aisle in the drugstore - wooden spoons! Cupcake liners! Ping-pong balls!
However, can I drag you back to my initial bleatings - the point being that it is a rich persons gift to their child to allow them free rein in such a hardware project.
Yes we have lots of craft materials that we've acquired over the years, no we don't have $30 to spend on "random crap". But this precious little to do with where we started ...
Doesn't take that much.
Lets be honest, you can only make so much out of plastic drinks cartons and cardboard packaging. Even then it's like, oh we need some clamps, a decent trimming tool, etc..
Don't worry I'm just exhausted with "making do" at the moment. At the risk of broadcasting a break down I think I'd better slip away quietly ...
Really curious about your situation. How can there be nothing you can do?
Too often as adults we take over, we are too quick to step in, solve problems, "help" & rescue. Playing dumb can be the smartest thing to do sometimes.