Colonial Craft: Corn Husk Dolls

Corn Husk Dolls were a toy for Native American Indian children.  When the settlers from Europe came to the New World, they began making them as well.  Corn Husk Dolls typically are made without faces but they can be made with pants or a dress. 

I found directions for making Corn Husk Dolls at Native American Life Living Art.  You can dry your own corn leaves or husks but I was able to find a big bag of clean, dry husks at our local store.  I soaked them in water before we used them to make them soft and easier to work with.

The corn husks have a wide end and then they taper down to a pointed end.  Gather four corn husks together, all lying in the same direction.  Tie them together near the end that has the wider ends.  You can use twine or yarn, whatever you have on hand.

Use scissors to round over the wide end where you just tied them together.  Now, take the pieces of husk at the more narrow end and fold them over the tie you just made and then tie them in place.  This makes the doll's head.

Take another piece of corn husk and roll it up.  These will be the doll's arms.

Tie both ends tightly to form the hands and then slide the piece into the corn husk body, just below the head.

Tie the corn husks together again just below the arms to form the doll's waist.

Drape a piece of corn husk around the doll's shoulders in a criss-cross pattern.  Then gather four corn husks around the doll's waist and tie on to make a skirt.  Trim the skirt to even the bottom.

Rachel loved making these corn husk dolls.  She made several of them and she had them play together as they talked to each other and acted out scenes of colonial times.

VTech Innotab Max {review}

Rachel was delighted to learn the VTech had sent us an Innotab Max to review.  She has the original Innotab and she enjoys it.  However, the Innotab Max is so much more advanced and has some great new features.  

Let's start with the look of it.  The Innotab Max comes in blue or pink.  It has a 7 inch high resolution screen which presents the best graphics I've seen from a children's tablet.  There is also a dual-core CPU so the tablet runs significantly faster than her previous Innotab.  It has a strong plastic case with a cover that flip over and act as a stand.  It is sturdy and has already survived several accidental drops.  It has a stylus and a slot to hold it.  

What can a child do with the Innotab Max?  There are games and ebooks available for a wide range of children's ages and abilities, from ages 3-9.  Rachel is in first grade and there is a wide selection of games and books for her to learn with on this tablet.  Her favorite things to do is work with the Movie Maker app or play the Frozen game but she also loves listening to her music playlists.  The Innotab Max comes with an educational bundle plus one Toca Boca app of your choice.  But there is also a complete library of additional games and ebooks that can be downloaded to the device or game cartridges can be purchased as well.  There is a camera and Rachel loves taking selfies!  She can even use the Kid Connect app to send her pictures directly to me on my smart phone.  She can also use Kid Connect to send voice or text messages to me. 

The parent side of things.  There are parental controls that let me manage her apps, web access, and tablet time.  I can log on and view her progress to see what she is playing and how she is doing.  I let her bring the Innotab Max if I know we might be stuck in a doctor's waiting room for a while.  It has a headphone jack so she can be entertained without disturbing others around her.

The Innotab Max's MSRP is $99.99 which is great for such a high quality children's tablet that will grow with my child.  For more information, check out the VTech website.

VTech provided me with an Innotab Max for the purpose of this review.  However, all comments and opinions stated here are entirely my own.

Creativity with Tinker Toys

I have always thought of Tinker Toys as building toys for really young kids.  I expected that once both of my kids were building with LEGO that we would get rid of the Tinker Toys.  

How wrong I was!  My kids, even my 9 year old, still loves the Tinker Toys.  He probably builds something with them every day.

This morning Rachel built this bow and arrow set.  She tried to shoot it but she is kind of missing some of the science behind how the bow and arrow actually work.  But her design was great.  She even had a rest for the arrow.

Nicholas also made something out of Tinker Toys.  We weren't quite sure what it was at first.

  XOI?  What is XOI?  

Then he told us it was X Box One!  Yes of course, that is a square and not an O.  It was his very creative way to ask if he could play video games.

They aren't allowed to have "screen time" during the school week.  This includes video games, TV shows, or computer games unless, of course, it is something I have them doing specifically for school.  But it always leads to lots of asking for screen time on the weekend (we still control how much screen time they get on the weekend).  We let him play video games for a little while this morning but Stuart pointed out to them that they would not have used their imaginations to create these Tinker Toys contraptions if they had been glued to the TV all morning.