PLAYHOUSES OF OTHER PEOPLES
It is not in the least necessary to confine yourself to making playhouses that are like the houses you live in or see about you, for with a little ingenuity you can construct bits of all sorts of strange countries right in your play-room. In one of the schools in New York City the children study geography and history of certain kinds by making with their own hands scenes from the places about which they study.
One of the most valuable materials for making these playhouses is ordinary modeling clay. You can buy fifty pounds for from fifty cents to a dollar, and with this you are equipped to make almost anything you can see in pictures. Put the clay (if bought dry) into a jar, pour over it clear water, and stir it up with a stick until perfectly smooth and about the consistency of hard butter. The first thing to do is to make a supply of bricks for building. This should be shaped like real bricks and about two inches long. Smaller ones are also possible if you wish to have your settlement on a very small scale. These should be made as regularly as possible and as nearly of the same size. After a little practice one becomes very expert in this simple art. They should then be dried in the sun and are ready to use, though they must be handled carefully. If you can obtain terra-cotta clay, and have it baked hard you will have real bricks that will outlast your play-time.
A Pueblo Settlement
Suppose now that you have been reading about the life of the Pueblo Indians in our Southwest, and you have a picture of one of their singular settlements. The accompanying picture shows what was done in the way of constructing such a settlement by a class of school children, none of whom were over eight years old. You can model little clay Indian inhabitants and paint them as you please, to represent their brown skins and bright-colored clothes. If you can have a box with a little earth in it to set before your Pueblo village you can sow wheat seed, or mustard, and model Indians working in the fields with their crude plows. Anything of which you can find a picture can be reproduced. Indian villages and camps are easy to make and interesting. And once you are started on Indian life it may be fun to make yourselves Indian costumes. The costumes in the picture shown were made by the boys who wear them. By looking closely at them you can copy them.
An Esquimau Village
Another class in the same school painted their bricks white to represent blocks of snow and made an Esquimau village. This is fascinating and easy to do. Or, the rounded huts can be modeled all in one piece directly from the clay. Any book describing the life of dwellers in the Arctic region will tell you how they make their houses and you can make tiny imitations of them that will be infinite fun to construct and the admiration of all your friends when finished. Cotton-wool can be used for snow (powdered isinglass also is pretty), and bits of broken mirror for ice-ponds. Little sleds can be made on which to put your Esquimau hunter, who may be one of the white-fur-clad dolls so cheaply bought in toy-stores. Or you can model a little doll just the right size to be entering the door of your tiny rounded white hut.
AN ESQUIMAU SLED
INDIAN COSTUMES
(Facing [page 266])