Gather up all the spools you can find, big, little, thick and thin; no matter how many, you can use them all. There is no end of fun to be had with these always-on-hand, easily found toys; they may be made into almost everything. Tell your mother that you can build
The Parthenon
if she will give you enough spools, and see her smile at the very idea. But say you are in earnest and ask her not to look until you call “Ready.” Then go to work and surprise her with a miniature representation of one of the most beautiful temples ever built. Begin by standing four spools in a row for the first side of the building, allowing about the width of a spool between each two. Place eight in a row for the second, four for the third, and eight for the fourth side. Have the spools all of the same size, that the walls may be alike and perfectly even, because, as you know, the walls are to be formed of columns, not as many as in the original, but enough to give an idea of the Greek temple. Build up the spools three deep into pillars; then lay a piece of pasteboard on the top of the columns for a ceiling. Bend another piece of pasteboard lengthwise through the centre for the roof, and stand it tent-like on top of the ceiling.
Fig. 501. You can measure the correct size of the ceiling by laying a piece of pasteboard down flat on the floor along the eight-columned side of the Parthenon to obtain the length, and placing it flat on the floor across the four-columned side to mark the width. Make the roof the same length and a little wider than the ceiling to allow for the height of the bend through the centre.
Now let your mother see
The Little Greek Temple
(Fig. 501) and tell her that she must imagine a space immediately beneath the roof filled in with the most beautiful statuary she can think of, that the spools are white marble columns and she should see, in fancy, another row of stately columns inside the ones you have built. Your mother will be greatly interested and can tell you all about the real Parthenon, and probably will hunt up a picture of the temple that you may see just how near you came to making the little model look like the wonderful Parthenon, on the Acropolis, in Athens.
After admiring the building for a while, pretend that a left-over spool
Is a Venetian Shell