COLONIAL CRAFTS FOR YOU TO MAKE

Dipping candles colonial-style might be a worthwhile supervised activity for a late elementary social studies group but instead the D'Amatos suggest making a candle holder out of buttons and wire -- which doesn't offer much insight into colonial experience. And the furnished model room for which they give detailed directions could result in an impressive handmade doll house for older children with the necessary manual coordination and patience, but constructing the fireplace, for example, from a foil TV dinner container and some egg cartons won't show them how the colonists did it. Later the authors mix more authentic procedures such as making onion skin dye ""just as it was done 200 years ago"" with ""get-the-idea"" approximations including a heddle for weaving made out of plastic forks. A misleadingly titled what-have-you.