soap boats!
Harvey owns a set of wood-carving tools, but it's Elijah who uses them the most often. But making a piece of wood into what he can see in his mind isn't always easy for him. So he was immediately taken by a project in a wood carving book we got from the library that's all about carving soap. Significantly easier than wood! The only holdup was that we don't actually have any bar soap, just artisanal pucks and blobs, but he had only to suggest to Mama that he needed supplies and she instantly procured a three-pack of Ivory soap for him to work with. His first boat took a little bit of time, as he puzzled out the instructions; he was so delighted with it that he immediately started on a second one, which came together much more quickly. Then he thought of saving the last bar of soap for its manufacturer-intended purpose, but I told him that I wouldn't be able to stand the smell so he should go ahead and carve it. The third boat was a three-master! Then he molded a lifeboat out of the left-over chips. You can't do that with wood!
model 1
The only problem he ran into was in testing the boats. He filled the sink to see how well they floated; they did, but they also immediately started lathering. Ivory soap is soft! So now they're display models on the windowsill above his desk, which is right next to mine. It's just like having an air freshener. I'm going to try and find him some softish wood to carve into a boat along the same lines, but that's going to have to wait a bit: now he's into clay.