Better dough for Roman Aquaduct?

[Jill]

Hi there -

 

My son and I just built a wee aquaduct using the recipe in SOTW activity book one. We were so excited for it and it's kind of cool but we would enjoy it even more if the dough wasn't crumbly. I made the recipe to specs and we made the arches thick but it's still not that solid.

 

So, what other kind of dough could we use and bake into a good, hardened aquaduct (and other projects in the future)? Is there some spackling thing we could use? should we just get clay from a hobby or art store? What do you think?

 

Thanks - Jill

[Kathleen in VA]

Educational Insights makes a brick and mortar kit for the coliseum and they also sell a "make your own set" to build whatever you want. Both are available at many internet hobby and toy stores. I also found them at amazon.

 

I've never used these kits but I've seen them in stores and thought they looked like fun.

[Sunkirst]

We have used one of these kits, and I don't know that I would recommend it. My DS10 is a building nut, and was so excited to build his replica of the Great Wall of China. However, to get it to look like the box, one needed to be extremely precise... brick.... after... tiny... brick.

 

My son is not that detailed or precise yet, and he didn't like the project. It sits on a shelf, half done.

[kellycbr]

I'm in the middle of building a topographical map of the city of Jerusalem for the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program. We used a combination of leftover styrofoam (to build the mountains without the weight), covered with Celluclay and plaster of paris. I've never used Celluclay before, and it's interesting - like a premade papermache. You can combine celluclay with plaster of paris (the directions are on the piece of paper in the celluclay bag), and the I rather enjoyed working with them combined versus seperate. It was a bit more robust, if that makes any sense. Hopefully, this was somewhat helpful. I'm grateful for your question, since my ds and I will soon be making this project at well.

[DawnUK]

We made it a few years ago, but I used a recipe for sand dough instead. I found the recipe by doing a quick google search. It was VERY hard, and lasted a long time. It also looked like stone, since it was made of sand. I think that the recipe contained something like white glue, sand, and corn starch. It's also fun for making permanant sand castles.

 

--Dawn