Making Marshmallow and Toothpick Sculptures

Making marshmallow and toothpick sculptures is an activity that I’ve been wanting to try with Maia for a while now.

I think I first came across the idea of building toothpick sculptures in one of MaryAnn Kohl’s books—maybe Scribble Art.

I just kept it in the back of my mind as part of my neverending list of artful projects to do one day.

Until early December that is.

I found myself in the baking aisle of the grocery store for the umpteenth time and finally snagged a bag of mini marshmallows.

Since I remembered something about hard, stale marshmallows working
better than soft ones, I spread them out on a cookie sheet, and stashed
them out of sight above the kitchen cupboards (otherwise I’m sure they
wouldn’t have lasted long with our marshmallow-loving kid around). But
of course out of sight is out of mind, and I completely forgot about
them until yesterday.

They were nice and stale!

Making these marshmallow and toothpick sculptures was the perfect after-school construction project to do with Maia.

We connected the marshmallows with toothpicks. Or rather, connected the toothpicks with marshmallows.

What started off as a low-key sculpture-building activity became a
lesson in building and geometry as we learned what shapes were the
strongest and provided the most support (triangles rule!).

Here are a few pics:

A marshmallow and toothpick ladder to the moon…

Some marshmallow and toothpick houses…

The beginnings of a more elaborate marshmallow and toothpick sculpture…

And one of the finished marshmallow and toothpick sculptures!

Have you tried building with toothpicks yet?

If not, I highly recommend it!