My oldest daughter asked me to take her to WalMart the other day so she could buy supplies for a school project — a model of an atom. She bought gold jewelry wire, a large styrofoam ball, beads, and air dry clay. I could see the creative spark in her so I let her have whatever she wanted. (Thank goodness she didn’t ask for a pony.)

Model of an Atom

Isn’t it cool? I was so impressed that she could dream this up in her head. She used the wires to hold up the styrofoam ball, but she ended up using hot glue to attach the ball to the wires — and then had a blast making jewelry with the wire, beads, and glue. The styrofoam has a section cut out of it. She marked it with black marker and then I cut it out using a knife — carefully. It wasn’t as easy as florist’s foam, but I marked the outside & wedged it out in sections.

She used the beads and some of the air dry clay to make parts of the atom — and then used the wires and round green circle stickers folded in half to identify different parts of the atom. I think she added the beads at the bottom because they looked good there.

I can identify with that.