Making Animals Homeschool Art Kit is Fun for Everyone!
I was really excited to have the opportunity to review this Making Animals Air Dough Kit as a member of the Timberdoodle Blog Team. The time was right to try some sculpture art and these projects looked simple enough for my students to achieve while not being childish. While my 11-year-old struggles the most with fine motor skills my 9 and 13 year old don’t get enough practice. Everyone had a great time using this kit.
Sometimes with Outside the Box kids you find yourself skipping learning activities because of a child’s abilities and and then never coming back to them later. There is a lot of hands-on art projects we have skipped the last several years because Fine Motor Skills are pretty important for creating art and it can quickly lead to frustration and tears if the child doesn’t have the required coordination. What I loved about this Making Animal Air Dough Kit was we only had to make 3 different shapes in order to make any animal in the book!
The Making Animals Air Dough Kit can be found in Timberdoodle’s 2nd grade curriculum kit or the kit can be purchased individually. The homeschool art kit includes an instruction book and a tub of dough in individually wrapped packages with a set of tools.
What is included:
The activity book uses three different clay shapes to teach the student to make _____ different animals. There is also directions to add textures and details using the tools in the kit. It’s a great foundation to lead to even more creativity later.
The bucket of clay includes individually wrapped 1 oz packages of a variety of colors. At first this seemed wasteful until I realized that you can open only what you need and not have the rest dry out. It’s actually a genius way of packaging it. There is also a pack of goggly eyes to add to your creatures and a set of 3 tools. There are three tools made of durable plastic and have different tips on each end, giving you 6 different options! Even when we use all the air dough we will keep using the tools for other sculpture projects in the future.
Getting Started
The first day I introduced the clay to my 3rd and 6th graders. Together we practice the three shapes needed to make all the animals, sphere, cone, snake. My 11 year old with special needs found the cone to be the most challenging and frustrating, but with some extra practice he got the hang of it. After we practiced the three shapes we each made a duck following the directions in the book.
We noticed as we worked with the clay that it started to dry out quickly, and the book encourages adding a bit of water or a mist if that happens, to soften it again. The boys were done after we made the ducks so we stopped for the day.
The next day they asked to do more with the Making Animal Air Dough Kit. They wanted to make more animals. Their older sister was around and so she made some, too. Even the 11 year old who was challenged the first day returned to make a chick this time. They pulled out some of our playdough tools as well, to help them create. My oldest took the instructions for the salamander and used them to make an axolotl. She used the techniques for adding spots to add a stripe and also added extra tentacles to the head. The 9 year old used the directions to make a turtle and an apple without a worm and then invented his own strawberry, using one of the tools to add the seed texture. They got creative fast with the colors and tools.
Will this Homeschool Art Kit work for Outside the Box Kids?
It can be hard to find art projects that are simple enough for delayed fine motor skills while also being interesting enough for my students to feel accomplished when they finish them.
The air dough in this homeschool art kit is much softer than firing clay which makes it easier for weaker hands to manipulate it without getting tired. The Making Animal Air Dough Kit was a great fit because it was basic enough to give us a foundation and practice basic skills, but the book gave us tons of options to use those shapes to fit our interests. And the animals inspired even more projects as well.
Having small packets of clay also took the pressure off to use all the dough at once and we can return to it in a week or more without worrying about the dough drying up. One note, my smell sensitive kid did notice a distinct smell to the clay when we opened each package of clay. It dissipated as we worked and was gone as the clay dried.
It was an approachable and gentle introduction to sculpture for our Outside the Box kids and made them come back wanting to do it again.
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