Bear Soapstone Carving Kit (A Timberdoodle Review)

 

The Bear Soapstone Carving Kit found through Timberdoodle is another incredible hands-on activity for active learners. The front of the box states that this project will take 90 minutes to complete. While this may be true, you can absolutely stretch this out over several days (or even weeks if only working on it a day per week) as a continuing activity when you need some busy work for your older child to work on independently. 

It is targeted at ages eight and up, and I agree that children younger than that might not have the attention span for such a long project. That said, if you are looking for a handicraft activity to encourage skills such as filing, sanding, and stonework, then this is the perfect fit for your child—regardless of the age of your boy or girl. 

Working with soapstone is a rewarding craft. I even saw some other family members ask my son to work on it for a little while. The filing and sanding process is broken up into several parts—and takes time. Sanding and filing are skills that my teens are working on—for fun—so little brother was eager to learn the same skills with a project that had a fun end result—a soapstone bear. 

Unless your child is willing to sit for a full 90-minute session, I highly recommend breaking this project up into several sessions. For my son, I just left this project on his homeschool shelf and let him work on it at will. When he needed something to keep his hands busy, he would work on it for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time. 

The instructions are easy to follow and perfect for a struggling reader since all of the instructions have minimal text and simplified pictures and drawings to explain the process. This made the project essentially hands-off for me. 

After several sessions of sanding, filing, and perfecting the soapstone bear into the shape he wanted, out came the hair dryer. I am always nervous using a hair dryer for crafts since if you use it too closely to the craft it can short out the hair dryer. I explained that to him and he made sure not to press the hair dryer right up against the soapstone. If you are concerned about that happening, you might want to find an old one or buy a cheap one to keep on hand for crafts. 

Then came his favorite part—wax on, wax off. Please excuse my 80s movie reference here! He loved applying the wax to the warm soapstone and seeing his creation glisten as a result. After this step, he rubbed the wax off—but not completely. He saw the brown color of the bear on the box and then the black color of his product and said he really liked the black color better. I believe if he had rubbed the bear for the full fifteen minutes as instructed, he would have had a brown bear, but he was determined to stick with the black. I am curious to see if, over time, it will wear off and turn brown. Either way, he was pleased with his finished product, and so was I! He would definitely do this type of craft again!

Disclaimer: Many thanks to Timberdoodle for providing the above product in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are 100% my own.