Summer Camp and Some Fuzzy Fun!

Big Bro and Little Bro are really enjoying summer camp!
Today, they shared a little of what they loved so far at their summer camp...

Both loved:

• Getting to spend time with new friends.

• Listening to Miss L as she read two of Eric Carle's books, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Very Busy Spider.

• Playing different Eric Carle inspired board games.

Big Bro enjoyed "making fuzzy caterpillars out of cardboard egg carton sections and some paint." Little Bro liked "working with tissue paper, paint, and glue."
Yes, we love Eric Carle and all of his wonderful books...

So glad that this Eric Carle themed camp is a huge hit with the boys! 

We looked up a bit about Eric Carle and read some of his blog posts...the boys and I liked that his dad used to read comics to him (or, as he referred to them The Funny Papers) and tried to share about how the artist made the pictures and the perspective the artist used.
We also liked learning that sometimes, even Eric Carle has struggled with keeping his creative juices flowing.
This is a great life lesson for the boys, because they got to see that even if a person is very talented and famous, that does not mean that they don't run into challenges...
The thing is that Eric Carle always has managed to take a break when necessary and then, he comes back and is all the more creative.
Eric Carle also shares about making pretzels and the background of his book, Walter the Baker.
After reading this post and sharing it with the boys, I have a feeling that making homemade German style pretzels will be something that we do in the very near future...
Just in case you share the blog post with your children and they get hungry for pretzels, too:
Here is a German Pretzel recipe from Cookography, who got the recipe from Fresh Loaf...

Today, in addition to sharing what they liked about camp and about Eric Carle, Big Bro and Little Bro both decided that they wanted to play with a new sensory item we picked up called Moon Dough (perhaps because it was kind of like the idea of making pretzels...)

Moon Dough is a new Swedish-made product that is wheat free, does not dry out, and is incredibly light.***
The fact that it is wheat free is a big deal, as there are children in the boys' homeschool co-op who are allergic to wheat, so this will be nice that they will be able to all use the dough. 
When I asked Little Bro to describe it, he said" It feels fuzzy and smells like crayons."

When I asked Big Bro to describe it, he said " It is so light and fluffy and is easy to form into a ball shape."

We purchased a total of four small containers of Moon Dough.
The boys selected the colors: red, yellow, blue, and white.

They loved playing with it!
They were intrigued by the feel, the smell, and the properties of it, as far as how you can mold with it, etc.The boys really enjoyed working with the dough, along with some items from their kitchen play set on our lanai...
Moon Dough is fairly crumbly..but this can be overcome if you have children use a bin to work with it, almost like a mini sand box.
Little Bro and Big Bro agreed that "the dough needs to stay in the box like sand stays in a sandbox...so if a little spills, you do your best to clean it up, but you don't put all of it on the outside of the box on purpose."
As far as an extension that could take Moon Dough from just being a modeling dough into a math material, think that this dough would be awesome to use if you happen to have 3D shapes that can open to be filled...such as a cone or cube shape, as the dough would work beautifully in this scenario...


***I was not asked by anyone affiliated with Moon Dough to do a review of Moon Dough...only am giving  my honest opinion of this as it was something that my sons really enjoyed and that was an activity that was part of our day today. 


Please be sure to check out all of the other cool We Play links over at Childhood 101!