A Small Diorama Project

Santa got the boy this Scene-A-Rama diorama set last Christmas. The school closings over the past week gave us the opportunity to play around with it. 

This is the first time I had ever put one together so Santa also got extra glue, grass, and rocks in case the kit was kind of crummy. He needn't have worried, it turns out. The kit is absolutely awesome. The instructions are very clear and kid/parent friendly.  The included materials are high-quality.  It is clearly marked that the base is sold separately, however, so Santa kind of dropped the ball there. 

No big deal.  A scrap piece of oak plyboard later and we were off to the races. 

Initially, the boy wanted to make a battlefield where dinosaurs fought toy soldiers. He changed his mind, though, while we were in the middle of making the trees. For some reason he suddenly switched gears and decided he just wanted a peaceful scene with a river. I think part of his thinking was that the little Dollar Store dinosaurs he had were kind of cheap-looking compared to the trees.

Totally understandable.

I was against adding the river because I was afraid I would screw up the base.  The instructions made it sound so darn simple I instantly switched to “high alert mode”. Nothing is that straightforward. I was glad to see that I was wrong and the procedure for how to scrape the surface of the matting were spot on and it was super easy to add the water feature you see here using paints he already had laying around.

During the construction phase of this project the river became a stream he wanted to span with a rock bridge. He didn't want to wait for me to cut some wood in the garage so we could arch the rocks above the streambed. Meh.  I wasn't going to micromanage the situation by forcing my vision of what a rock bridge should look like, and, besides, it was his kit, not mine. It turned out just fine.

Oh, btw, I was in charge of dabbing glue, cutting the plyboard, scraping the riverbed, and painting the water and the six-year-old was in charge of everything else.

Bushes, grasses, and other accents were added and here is the end result.  Not bad for a couple of first-timers over a couple of hours.  There is plenty of leftover material for a couple more projects. We would only need tree trunks and matting to create another little world.  

I highly recommend this kit (and this company’s series of products) to anyone out there needing to build a diorama for a school project or simply wanting to pass the time with their children doing something creative.  The possibilities are endless and there is very little of the “waiting around for stuff to dry” that sucks the fun and the magic out of the building process for kids.

I really hope the kid changes his mind about the dinosaur thing with the next diorama. That would be sweet.  See, I have some cool ideas for a volcano with lights and lava and stuff and oh my God I’m turning into one of those scale model train guys aren’t I?