For a camp fire, pile up some broken twigs in a cleared spot in your Indian encampment and put in some scraps of twisted, red tissue paper which will look like flames. One of the kettles from the dolls’ kitchen may hang on a forked stick over this make-believe fire to cook the dinner for the walnut Indian tribe.
This play Indian village will last all winter, a comfortable camping ground for the tribe, and a delightful plaything for the clever boy who made it.
There may be some walnut squaws added perhaps, and some peanut papooses wrapped in blankets cut from a scrap of old chamois and hung contentedly by thread to the sheltering trees. The grass will grow so high that it may have to be mowed with the nursery scissors, and when the trees fade, more can be gathered and put in the places of the old ones.
CORN TOYS AND HOW TO MAKE THEM
CORN cobs really look as if they would like to play. There is a whole binful out in the barn, and the chickens do not want them and neither does the farmer. He will make a big bonfire out in the wood lot some day and burn up all the corn cobs if the children do not take possession of them first, and help them to play by making them into toys.
What fine, long, straight little logs they are for a log cabin, or they might be made into Indian or toy rafts, or a rail fence, or almost anything else a child chooses.
First you can make a little rail fence that stretches across one corner of the barn floor. To do this, lay down six corn cobs in zigzag fashion on the floor with the ends not quite as far apart as the cobs are long. Then across every two cob ends lay another cob and finish the fence in this way, making it very snug.
Behind the fence lives Apple Johnny. He owns the farm whose boundary lines the fence marks out on the floor. Apple Johnny has a little hard apple for his head joined by a toothpick to a fat apple that forms his body. His legs and arms are twigs and his face is cut with a jack-knife in the smaller apple. Apple Johnny has a herd of wild potato horses on his farm. Each potato has four twig legs, and a flowing mane, made of a fringed corn husk pinned to the long end of the potato, and a straw tail pinned to the other end.