This is an activity that I've been wanting to try with Maia for a while now. I think I first came across the idea of building sculptures from marshmallows and toothpicks in one of MaryAnn Kohl's books. I just kept it in the back of my mind as part of my neverending list of artful projects to do one day. Until early December that is. I found myself in the baking aisle of the grocery store for the umpteenth time and finally snagged a bag of mini marshmallows. Since I remembered something about hard, stale marshmallows working better than soft ones, I spread them out on a cookie sheet, and stashed them out of sight above the kitchen cupboards (otherwise I'm sure they wouldn't have lasted long with our marshmallow-loving kid around). But of course out of sight is out of mind, and I completely forgot about them until yesterday. They were nice and stale!
This was the perfect after-school project to do with Maia. We connected the marshmallows with toothpicks. Or rather, connected the toothpicks with marshmallows. What started off as a low-key sculpture-building activity became a lesson in building and geometry as we learned what shapes were the strongest and provided the most support (triangles rule!).
Here are a few pics:
Have you tried this? If not, I highly recommend it! And maybe it works with a new bag of soft marshmallows, too...
