This morning, I challenged Travis’s creativity. Could he make a robot with nothing more than 3 items from our craft bin: craft sticks, pipe cleaners, and googly eyes? He was instantly up for it!

I laid out the materials (we also added tape) and watched him ponder.

He very quickly decided a few sticks taped together could be the body. “I can do it!” he insisted, ripping the tape and sticking it on by himself. Then of course we added eyes, which Travis wanted to tape on all by himself.

Next up came embellishments. He insisted we use shiny gold chenille sticks, since robots are usually shiny metal.

He wanted to add arms, so another craft stick went on crosswise. But then he thought his robot needed wings. Some pipe cleaners twirled around the arm stick did the trick.

The fun didn’t end there. We used chenille sticks to twist “bodies” and “arms” of more craft sticks together for baby robots.

Then, because Travis is obsessed with all things Spiderman and his villains these days, we added 8 chenille stem pieces to another body as “Dr. Octopus.”

What a great morning of fun we had, using just these three items from the craft bin!