Get some modeling clay from your local art dealers, or buy it online here. The exact instructions for the clay you buy will come with it, so what follows is a general approach.

Roll the clay out so that it’s nice and flat and smooth. Now carve and cut out a nice relatively large flat circle out from the clay (this will be the circumference of the bowl). Do this again for the second bowl – roll it out, carve a circle and cut again, and try to make sure that you keep it the same size. You can trace it from the first circle if you wish. Nice you have your two bases.

Next step is to build up the bases. To do this make nice long thick sausages out of the clay. These will get built up to become the sides of the bowls. Take the first sausage and place it around the outer edge of one of the circles. Make sure it’s stuck really tight and that there aren’t any air spaces. Now do this again with a second sausage, sticking it on top of the first one. After a few sausages, you’ve built up the bowl. Do the same for the second bowl.

Now you are going to want to stick the two bowls together. This is where the bright spark idea of having one object instead of two for pets to drink and eat out of. Using a nice thick piece of clay (you can determine the shape yourself – be creative and make sure it will look nice), stick the two bowls together.

Again make sure that everything is stuck properly and that there aren’t any holes (or the water could leak out!).

So now your kid’s invented his or her own doggy drink and food bowl. The clay will come with instructions on how to place it into the oven and solidify it. Be sure to help your kid out here or do it for them, as you don’t want anyone to get hurt.

All you need is a few glasses of exactly the same shape and size. I would recommend 5-10 glasses. Now fill each of the glasses with different levels of water. This will determine the resulting pitch of the glass when it is struck. There will be a lot of trial and error here, but get your kid to take a spoon and tap each glass to determine its pitch. Add or take out water where necessary, until you have a nice range of pitches. It’s that simple, your kid now has invented an instrument. For visual purposes, you may want to take food coloring and use different colors for different pitches.

Now is the composing part. Your kid can start off with a simple tune like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Happy Birthday, or Mary Had a Little Lamb. Once he or she has figured out that tune, he or she can move on to composing an original one. What’s cool about the color coding is that you can get a piece of paper or cardboard and record in colors the melody of the tune. So when you present this idea, you can include the composition with it. Be careful when transporting this or redoing the experiment at school: if you don’t replicate the water levels exactly, the pitch will change! So make sure your kid prepares this at school or marks the water levels of each glass so that the water xylophone can be replicated.

Now get some scissors (make sure they are safe for kids to use – your local stationary store should sell scissors for children), and have the kids invent a celebrity! All they need to do is page through the magazines and cut out pictures of people.  Then get the kids to cut out different features of the people – the hair, nose, eyes, shirt, etc. Now the really fun part: have them invent a new celebrity by mixing and matching the different features! If you want you can get the kids to stick them into scrapbooks, and share why like their new celebrity invention.

What’s great about this kids invention idea is that it is interactive, and teaches creative skills of seeing objects and things for what they could be, not what they are, by mixing and collating them in new and interesting ways. It also makes cutting out and sticking down into a fun activity (and helps build motor skills in the kids).