Craft Science: Smithsonian Maker Lab--28 Super Cool Projects by Jack Challonger

Long summer days are on their way, and when it's too hot to play or summer showers stray your way, it's nice to have some indoor fun that's actually educational.

Jack Challonger's Maker Lab: 28 Super Cool Projects: Build * Invent * Create * Discover (Dorling Kindersley, 2017) is here, with 28 varied things to make, mostly from stuff found around the house.

Divided into four main categories--Food for Thought, Around the Home, Water World, and The Great Outdoors--Challonger begins at the beginning, with a succinct run-down of the scientific method, and then jumps quickly into "Kitchen Science" with an "electrifying" entry with the venerable Lemon Battery, extending this oldie but goodie with batteries using other fruits (but not the old dill pickle version).

Other sure-fire kid pleasers in this section include Homemade Slime (a household version of Silly Putty based on, yes, shampoo; Baked Alaska, an edible experiment into the insulating properties of air bubbles suspended in meringue; and Invisible Ink, the tried-and-true lemon juice concoction for penning secret messages--which also solves the problem of what to do with the leaky lemon after the battery project.

The Around the Home section is is loaded with ideas for utilizing stuff hiding in linen closets, kitchen cabinets, and junk drawers: Sensational Speakers for Smart Phones, crafted from toilet paper cylinders, paper cups, and paper towels, as well as Balloon-Powered Cars; while the Water World section offers a Soap-Powered Boat, self-scrubbing Bath Fizzies, and a working Water Wheel. The Great Outdoors section offers building a Jungle in a Bottle, Wind Cups, an anemometer crafted from plastic cups and a soda straw, and Sun Plants, artsy frameable prints made from ferns, flowers, or leaves which leave their image on light-sensitive paper when left in the sun.

To back up the science connection, DK editors offer a nifty glossary that supplies a working vocabulary for young makers, with terms such as "base" and "acid," "ions," "surface tension," and "UV (ultraviolet) light."

Jumping into the popular mania for "Maker Centers" (what used to be called craft or science centers), Dorling Kindersley invites youngsters in with their trademark page design, large, detailed, color photographs set spot-art style against the large, sturdy bright while pages, accompanied by step-by-step directions easily accessible to middle readers, making most of these activities safe and simple enough for upper elementary students to do with minimal supervision.

Eggs-cellent Art: 50 Easter Things to Make and Do by Kate Knighton, et al

Easter is basically a religious holiday, but like those other dual sacred-and-secular observations Christmas and Halloween, with the folkways of two millennia behind us, Easter has its own secular symbols and celebrations, and those are the stuff of Usborne's 50 Easter Things to Make and Do (Usborne Activities).

Crafty creators Kate Knighton's, Lucia Pratt's, and Fiona Watts' collection of Easter handicrafts are inexpensive to produce, totally charming, kid-and-grownup friendly, and well, that word shunned by children's book reviewers, darn CUTE!

Included inside are a variety of crafts: homemade greeting cards, smudged pastel chicks easily personalized even by non-artists and a surprising open-up chick with a super-simple three-dimensional beak wide open, cottony lambs and fluffy bunnies with soft, touchable tissue coats, strings of pastel eggs to hang like Christmas lights from an Easter tree, over doorways, and around the tablecloth, quaint hats for kids and for colored eggs with silly faces, pecking hens that rock back and forth for table decorations, and directions for rabbit facepaint that even a novice can master instantly--just a few of the dandy and non-daunting designs that these veteran authors serve up. Flowers are up and trees are greening; even the ancients got into the spring thing and made it part of their celebration, and so should we.

Done up in a small spiral-bound board book format with pages of sturdy (and wipe-able) stock, one craft, with materials and step-by-step instructions, complete on each double-page spread, a book that can lie flat or even stand up for easy reference, and charming illustrations done up in the proper Easter egg palette, this one is a real keeper!

"Picky" Eaters: Max & Mo Go Apple Picking by Patricia Lakin

Max and Mo, those artsy classroom critters, are back in an autumn adventure--with apples!

It all begins when Max and Mo experience a bit of ennui in the eateries department. It seems that the "Big Ones" who feed them are stuck in a rut--it's corn, corn, and more corn, morning, noon, and night, day after day.

"NO MORE CORN!" they said.

Max scratched his chin. "How can we tell them?"

NEW FOOD! NEW FOOD! they shouted.

But nothing happened.

But all is not lost! Soon Max & Mo spot a note on the blackboard. "We went apple picking," it says, and soon the hamsters' tummies begin to rumble at the thought of the fresh apples and homemade applesauce that they know will follow. "I cannot wait!" said Max. "Let's go!" said Mo. The two hamsters quickly pick the latch on their cozy cage and begin to explore the classroom for apples. "Not here," said Mo, as he crawls inside a an old left-behind sneaker. But just then the kids begin to return from their field trip, arms loaded with just-picked apples, and to their delight, Max and Mo watch an apple drop from one student's arms and roll into their hiding place beneath a table.

When the school day is done, the two get busy sampling the left-behind goodies.

"Applesauce! Yum!" said Max,

"Apple bits! Yum!" said Mo

"We're apple picking!" they said.

But Max and Mo still have their beautiful dropped apple, and the two decide to split the bounty between them. Max grabs a knife and Mo holds the fruit steady and "Split," the apple pops apart and one half flips, cut-side down, and lands right in a dish of poster paint on the art room supply table.

"Splash! Lift! Flip!" The apple half falls, paint-side down, on a piece of art paper.

"We made an apple print!

More! More!" they cheered.

And the art room animals get busy making apple prints in all the colors in the paint box, and when the children return on their next school day, we know that their classroom will be decorated with wall-to-wall apple prints and two happy hamsters will be back in their cage, proud--and well fed!

Patricia Lakin's and Brian Floss's delightful little Max & Mo Go Apple Picking (Ready-to-Read. Level 1) provides a perfect tie-in for autumn apple picking field trips and classroom cooking and crafts activities, all in vocabulary well suited to the beginning reader. Appended are directions for making apple prints and short-and-sweet illustrated directions for making applesauce:

1. Wash!

2. Cut!

3. Pour (water in pan)!

4. Stir!

5. Mash!

6. Yum!

Know When to Fold 'Em: Monster Origami by Duy Nguyen

Werewolves, Draculas, vampire bats--oh, my! But don't worry--these monsters are real lightweights. In fact, they are all made from paper!

Duy Nguyen's Monster Origami manages to make even the Frankenstein Monster look good in her classy craft book for the spooky season or any other time.

Nguyen begins with the basics of paper-folding technique, spending twelve pages on clear instructions and colored illustrations which can guide even amateurs to their desired product. Following are detailed step-by-step directions, shown in several colors to make the technique easier to follow, for constructing all the usual suspects--Frankenstein, a vampire bat, Reptilia, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, a Tolkienesque demon, a werewolf, Wolfman, King Ghidora, Count Dracula, and an alien.

The author also provides advice on selecting papers to be used in the origami projects and offers tips for individualizing the product by adding details with markers, glued-on features, posing the product, and using props.

Monster Origami is a howling-good resource for home crafts, school art projects, and just plain fun for kids and adults with patience and enthusiasm for the art of origami.

Pop Art! Extreme Balloon Tying by Shar Levine and Michael Ouchi

If you or someone you know has always yearned to thrill and delight your friends and family with your prestidigitational skills, here's a book worth a look!

Extreme Balloon Tying: More Than 40 Over-the-Top Projects is the most complete guide around for the novice in the skills of creating a variety of objects, animals, and human figures through the craft of balloon tying. Beginning with a simple but irresistibly cute octopus and increasing in difficulty through the human skeleton, Christmas trees and wreaths, and a skateboard figure, to a glow-in-the-dark Star Wars-type light saber, this well-bound paperback includes a list of the modest materials needed and extremely clear and well illustrated step-by-step directions for forty fancy creations.

Some of the projects included are lobsters, crabs, and dolphins, personalized by the addition of marker-drawn eyes, starfish, a very easy but nifty worm, flowers and vases, a menorah and dreidel, balloon sculptures with things inside, and an amazing Christmas tree. Each project is labeled for level of difficulty from 1 to 5+. Although there are no kits of materials recommended by the authors in this volume, there is a kit which includes the authors' previous book. Balloon crafting supplies are also widely available online and in craft and party shops. A simple, inexpensive balloon inflator is recommended but not required, according to the authors.

Some of the projects are suitable for group crafting sessions for holiday or birthday parties with each person taking home their own product. A few, such as the fruit basket, allow for participants of different abilities to work on a group project together. For 'tween or young teens with a flair for showmanship, this book and some dedicated practice could be the beginning of a lucrative part-time job working birthday or special occasion parties for younger kids, entertaining at street fairs, in family restaurants, or putting on performances for hospitals or nursing homes as a community service project.

Other sources include the authors' first book The Ultimate Balloon Book: 46 Projects to Blow Up, Bend & Twist and The Ultimate Balloon Book & Kit, which does provide all materials cited in the included book.

Now--take a deep breath and do the twist!