Teepee

After some spring yardwork I found myself with several fine examples of staghorn sumac saplings. The kids and I used these to practice our building skills. I shaved some of the twigs to provide some bark strings to tie the saplings together.

Being a good example of how to safely handle a knife.

The little lady and the young gentleman tied the saplings together to get our initial frame. It took a bit of trial and error to get their technique down, but they got pretty good by the end.

Our initial frame

We added more branches, as well as braces on the bottom. It seemed pretty sturdy...until we tried to pile on one too many pine boughs (with needles) for "walls." After it tipped we could see the points at which it was weak. I think we should have waited longer for the green strips of bark to dry and have a stronger hold on the saplings before we added weight. Oh well, we try, we learn, we try again! 

I gave the kids pretty free reign on this one. I did all the knife-work and gave them some tips, but when it came down to what materials to place where, it was all up to their problem-solving abilities to figure out what might work. I think the little lady learned a bit about not taking shortcuts when some of her more hastily done ties came undone. The young gentleman, well, he was climbing trees for much of the building process, but he was excellent at choosing which sapling to add next when he was helping :) We kept the saplings to try again, so we'll all have learned from these efforts and hopefully we'll have an awesome hand-built play shelter in our yard this summer!