We were inspired by Loralyn Radcliffe's Creative Crafts for Clever Kids, to make dinosaur teeth chokers. I was happy to have a project that interested the boys, though the girls joined in, too. The project called for salt clay again, one part salt, two parts flour, and enough water to make it dough-like, but not sticky. I should mention, while we've enjoyed baking up a few salt clay creations lately, and they've turned out well, for general play dough type dough, we still prefer the cooked dough, with cream of tarter (click here, for the recipe).
It turned out, the actual shaping of the salt clay into teeth, even large dinosaur teeth, was a bit advanced for my youngest two, ages 3 and 5. But, they busied themselves with other projects, while the older children took over the manufacture of teeth.
So, we ended up with a number of projects, from dinosaur nests with eggs, to a non-dinosaur related pencil holder. 
But, we also ended up with quite a number of very fine teeth. Before we baked them (which took a couple of hours at the ovens lowest setting), we used a toothpick to make a hole the top of each one, so we could lace a string through, and tie a knot on, to keep them in place on our choker.
Radcliffe suggests placing several on one choker, and using brown shoe polish to give them an aged appearance. D, opted to keep his natural, and to only wear one.
After all, dinosaur teeth are rare. Oh, and as for Creative Crafts for Clever Kids, it has our recommendation. The crafts really are creative, and despite the dozens (and dozens) of craft books we've perused, this one still had a few, that were new to us.
It's great to be a homeschooler.
7 comments:
Hey, the second week in June is "national Clay Week"- i do believe y'all have a jump start on the festivities...
Wonder Mom - National Clay Week? I had no idea. I'll have to look that one up! :)
This is a neat project. I am going to have to look and see if I can find that book. I also will have to remember the salt dough at Christmas time to let Selena make some Christmas ornaments. Thank you!
I'll have to give this a try, my kids have been dying to do something like this.
I think we will be making your teeth this week! I am looking for projects to go with teh magic Treehouse book Dinosaurs before Dawn.
Funny - the other project on the calendar (doing it at a small birthday party friday) is an "Amber" necklace. Made with string, food color + white glue, the underside of a waxed dixie cup and tiny plastic ants to embed in the "amber". Let dry for a couple days and you have an amber amulet!
Deanna - The amber craft sounds like a really neat idea. We might try it sometime, too!
You guys did such a great job on the teeth--they look awesome!! I hope you had fun with the project! And thanks for the nice review--homeschoolers are the best!!
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