A mini-yurt

This afternoon Max and I made a mini-yurt, after last night's bedtime read of Wonderful Houses Around the World, and reading about the yurts on the grasslands of Mongolia. Max saw the pictures and asked if we could make one, a big one, "what is big enough for all of us to live in." I said we could start with a small model. The real one is covered in wool felt, and of course I saw that and immediately was drawn to making one. Anything made out of felt can't be bad, right?

Here's the interior framework, made up of too-large popsicle sticks. We obviously needed thinner sticks, as these were too long and too fat to curve nicely around the empty olive jar we were using as a form. The pieces ended up too far apart to glue them together except at the intersection of each pair of sticks. So we liberally applied string and tied away.

The picture from the book. Definitely more structurally sound than ours.

Although our final product is not very aesthetically pleasing, and definitely won't be much use as shelter, I think this craft was a success. Max is learning about scales of things, what a model is, how much work a life-sized house would take to construct. So it was a good learning activity. However, he still wants to build a big one.

Comments

[Persephone Snyder]

The kiddies always want something bigger and better. ;)
I think your yurt is cute.

[heidi]

have to say...didn't know what a yurt was till just now! how fun to spend time with max! i love that age, when everything is such an adventure!

[debbie]

nice looking yurt, and with all the thought and learning that went on, i won't be surprised to see a life-size yurt in future - i like the door on the yurt in the book...happy new year to you and your family!

[carabeth]

that is so cool! a gnome-sized yurt.

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i can agree with the article