Making Animals Air Dough Kit || Timberdoodle Art Review
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Exploring art mediums and working with their hands will have your students eagerly sculpting animals all year long!
Art is a beloved staple in Timberdoodle Curriculum Kits and 2nd grade is no exception! Making Animals Air Dough Kit is available individually, and as a part of the 2nd grade curriculum kit.
A special thanks to Timberdoodle Co for providing a complimentary set of Making Animals Air Dough Kit in exchange for our honest review.
Your young student will be thrilled to know that they can create numerous animal creations from clay using only three basic shapes. The art kit comes with the beautiful book Modeling Clay with 3 Basic Shapes by Bernadette Cuxart. Inside the book are instructions for 46 different animals. It’s thick glossy pages feature step-by-step pictures and written instructions to help your little artist along.
The book begins with 4 pages of instruction on the modeling techniques. The 3 basic shapes are balls, teardrops, and worms. Further techniques they will learn include flattening the shape, cutting, marking, making holes, joining colors, and adding texture.
Alongside the book comes the tub of Air Dough clay. Air Dough is spongy, lightweight, unscented, gluten-free, and non-toxic so it’s easy for kids to work with. The tub contains 60 individual packets of clay in 13 different colors, 3 tools, and 5 sets of googly eyes.
The Timberdoodle handbook suggests creating one model a week until your dough runs out. It is averaged that around 20 small models can be made with the kit’s supply as long as any extra dough is stored in an airtight container for next time.
Air dough begins to harden within a few hours and typically sets well overnight. Once dry, the models can be painted or colored with markers to add any finishing touches.
What We Thought of Air Dough
My daughter is a little artist. She loves drawing, painting, modeling, and stirring up goop (sure they call it slime, but really it’s goop!). When she pulled out the Air Dough tub from the Timberdoodle box she squealed with delight and that night begged to do her first model.
She chose to create a turtle first. She needed some help to figure out how to make each of the basic shapes (I’d suggest going through the technique page and practicing first). But once I helped her understand how to make them and attach the clay pieces together, she was off and sculpting on her own.
She still asks for help here and there on the models, but overall she can follow the instructions independently.
In her words “They are really fun to make and I like to make them!”.
Her next creation was a puppy, which she did mostly by herself.
Modeling clay is excellent for fine motor development as well as artistic freedom.
My daughter especially loves making these critters and giving them to her friends as little gifts.
The models include basic animals like cats and dogs, and also more exotic ones like crocodiles, hippos, hedgehogs, and salamanders.
The 2nd grade curriculum kit comes with multiple art components that we are enjoying, including this Air Dough kit, but also the Djeco Natural World Painting set, Usborne Step-by-Step Drawing book, and a really fun journal/doodle book Me: A Compendium.
WANT TO SAVE MAKING ANIMALS AIR DOUGH KIT FOR LATER? SAVE TO YOUR FAVORITE PINTEREST BOARD HERE:
