Kai & Norah's Stick House

I LOVE reading books about hip, natural things to do with our kids. As of late, I've been thumbing through Earthways: Simple Environmental Activities for Young Children by Carol Petrash and Donald Cook. In the summer activity section, they discussed building a house out of sticks. Since we don't have a play structure in our backyard and have a son and daughter who LOVE to bring sticks home from walks, we jumped on the idea.

The structure itself began as eight large anchor sticks placed into the ground like a tepee; these were then tied with twine at the top to secure them to one another. Then, the real fun began -- weaving in all shapes and sizes of sticks. I found it particularly challenging at times since I've woven a lot of baskets in the past; I had to find just the right size stick with just the right pliability in order to make a solid (in my opinion) wall. Kit and the kids had better luck not trying to weave across more than one or two sticks. Quickly, I opted to adopt their technique.

The kids have had a lot of fun gathering sticks to add to their stick house on our walks. One neighbor told me that we needed to change our last name to Walker since she sees us out and about so much. Truth be told, we are out walking a lot. Every time we even so much as touch our vestibule door, Norah exclaims, "I get my pink shoes on and go for a walk!"

All in all, it's a toss up who enjoyed building the stick house the most, us or the kids. It must be noted, though, that Kit wins the prize hands down for becoming the most addicted to adding more and more sticks to the structure; he claims that it will never really be finished, and he's probably right.

Even Bodhi, our dog, got in on the action!