My kids, like most I'm sure, love to do crafts. They tend to make big messes also. We recently made our first Flat Stanleys. All you got to do is give the kids free range of your craft room and this is what will happen...

We are doing the Flat Stanley lapbook from HomeschoolShare.com. (More on that one at a later day).   In one of the books you do a marshmallow experiment. All three of the kids worked on this one (super easy). Since you had to choose three objects, they all chose one each...a hand, an old bottle (full of 11 yr old grape juice..long story), and a big book.

Both the littles are studying fossils right now in the science books (I had to do some rearranging of chapters to make it match). After we got done with book work, we went wandering down the road to find stuff to make 'fossils' out of. Let me tell you, we came back with a handful of leaves and one pinecone. Most of the stuff they used came from the potpourri bowl and their toy dinosaurs. (I did one also, just for fun).

Here is DS2's before the plaster...

Here it is flipped out of the bowl after the plaster dried...

Here is DD cleaning up her fossil...

(toothpicks and toothbrushes work well for this)

Here they are done.... (DS2=rectangle DD=circle MOI=square)

I think I've created monsters by allowing so many craft/experiments in such a short period. They want to hurry up with book work and want some more messes to make. At least they clean them up.