My five year old son loves to build. He is continually finding things from around the house and making things out of them, but truthfully, most of it is junk that ends up in the trash by the end of the day. He wants to make functional things and generally has good ideas, but all he has to use is old plastic containers, paper, glue, tape...We take him to Lowe's each Saturday to their free workshops, but I would really like to provide him with other opportunities to keep building. Any ideas??
My son did an apprenticeship of sorts with my dad when he was younger. Does your ds have anyone in his life that has a workshop or does projects that he could help with? He would be learning some very valuable skills and bonding with another adult who shares his interests at the same time. My ds helped build a crib, a bed, bird houses, decks, stairs, etc.--none of which were brought home (except a bird house), but all were useful. Hope this helps!
Besides Lego, K"Nex, Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoy, and so forth.... ? Sometimes Dollar Tree (and similar) has little kits with precut wood, sandpaper, and paints to make birdhouses, boats and other wooden toys, for not much money. CLE has two books called Let's Do Something (book 1 and 2), which "encourage creativity using common, readily available materials." http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/146577/using_junk_for_crafts.html?cat=24 http://www.solidwastedistrict.com/fun/crafts.html http://alphamom.com/family-fun/holidays/thanksgiving-crafts-using-recycled-materials/ http://rubberstamping.about.com/od/supplies/tp/Recycle.htm http://www.edequity.org/sigt/pdf/building_with_wonderful_junk.pdf http://fun.familyeducation.com/mixed-media/childrens-art-activities/47897.html http://recycledjunk.com/tag/crafts/ http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/ http://www.craftbits.com/kids-crafts Some of these links may not have exactly what you're looking for, but might give you some ideas.
Michaels has lots of little kits that are inexpensive to build cars, trucks, birdhouses, and the like. Also you can buy model kits there, to build cars and such. I think those would be great!
I was going to suggest legos and michael's or hobby lobby or the other craft stores. My kids play with with legos and Lincoln logs and wooden block sets all day long some days. Though my 6 year old did go through a phase where he collect weird trash to build a robot LOL every time I told him to throw something away he'd say "NO! I'm saving that for my robot!" He never did build the robot LOL but he had quite a collection of trash hahaha
Start a collection of PVC tubing "offs" cut into various sizes with various joints/fittings. It's cheap and he can build on a huge scale if he wishes.
ditto what donnamx said. We stood in the hardware store IDK how long yesterday while DH was trying to figure out what he needed, and our 5yo kept completely busy and silent putting together/taking apart conduit pipes & joints. I bet they'd hurt a lot less to step on than Legos! PVC is really cheap - I use it occasionally in gardening, and a 10' length of the narrow pipe is less than $2. Just get someone to saw it into pieces, add some joints, and there you go. The only thing - if you're environmentally minded, my understanding is that PVC is very difficult to recycle, and many places won't even try. So it's something that will most likely end up in the trash, eventually.
