Welcome back. If you read Part 1, you already know that the Traveling Spark Station isn’t about content — it’s about being present. It’s about showing a child that the person standing in front of them finds the world interesting and wants to explore it together.

In Part 2, we’re going to explore two areas that might surprise you: math and the arts. I say “surprise you” because math has a reputation for being dry and intimidating, and the arts sometimes get dismissed as less important than “real” subjects. The Traveling Spark Station disagrees with both of those ideas.

Math is everywhere — in the cookies you’re counting out, the nails you’re hammering, the fractions in a recipe, the shapes on a walk around the block. When you make math real and connect it to something a child already loves, it stops being a subject and starts being a tool. And the arts? Creativity, imagination, and making things with your hands are among the most powerful ways children (and adults) make sense of the world. From crocheting white blood cells to building fairy houses in Yellowstone, you’ll see exactly what I mean.

Pack your basket. Let’s keep going.

MATH

1. Learning Our Numbers
One Traveling Spark Station day was designed to help my littlest grands get more comfortable with numbers. Maggie already knew her numbers from 1 to 20. Jack could count to eight — really fast, which mattered a great deal to him — but he couldn’t yet point to items one at a time and count them individually. Mary couldn’t talk yet, but she could count in her own way.

We played number recognition games, tried some dot-to-dot pages (which produced a lot of laughs), worked on counting worksheets, and made a number caterpillar from circles of construction paper. And of course, there were books. There are always books.

2. Giving Math Meaning
People often ask how to get children interested in math. My answer is always the same: find something they already love that uses math and start there. Enjoyment of math has everything to do with inspiration.

I once came across an experience in Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s book ‘At Knit’s End’ that stopped me in my tracks. She had struggled with math in school, but when she discovered knitting, everything changed. She wrote that the very computations that had made her miserable in math class became completely worthwhile the moment they helped her knit. She wondered why no one had thought to teach math through knitting in the first place.

Math is in games, puzzles, building projects, cooking, shopping, and sewing. Pay attention to what your children are drawn to, and you will find math hiding inside. Help them find it there first, and they will discover that math can be fun.

3. Math Through Carpentry
Carpentry is one of the best math teachers I know. Counting nails, measuring boards, understanding angles and geometric shapes — a simple building project teaches more than it appears to. Two books I found and loved are Carpentry for Children and Housebuilding for Children, both by Lester Walker. They work beautifully for kids, teens, and adults alike. It was a joy to help my son make a stool as a gift, and later to do the same with my grands.

In my Traveling Spark Station, I kept simple carpentry projects for the littles — counting nails and hammering them into a tree trunk, counting each one again as it went in. Simple, hands-on, and genuinely fun.

4. The Periodic Table
I discovered a game called Elementeo, created by a fourth grader, that teaches the concepts behind the periodic table. Since I never took physics or chemistry, this was new territory for me. I found a fun video about the periodic table made for kids, and together my grands and I introduced ourselves to the fundamentals. None of us knew much going in, and we all came out knowing more. That’s one of the quiet joys of the Traveling Spark Station — you don’t have to be the expert. You just have to be willing to explore.

5. Geometry Through Shapes
I was interested to learn that my struggles with math might have had less to do with ability and more to do with a lack of early experience with shapes and spatial relationships. For young children, shapes really are the building blocks of mathematical understanding. As author Carolyn Brunetto puts it, many children grasp abstract math concepts far better through physical experience than through drills.

So, one day, the Spark Station arrived full of shapes. We looked at a wonderful book called Shape Capers by Cathryn Falwell, whose pictures were so inspiring that we simply copied them and made our own shape creations. We made a shape boat, created a chart of shapes to look for on a neighborhood walk, played a shape-naming game, and had shaped snacks — oval hard-boiled eggs, rectangular crackers, and circular oranges.

The highlight of the day came when I showed Jack that two half-circles make a whole circle, and that two triangles make a diamond. He did it over and over, genuinely amazed each time. That kind of wonder is exactly what the Traveling Spark Station is for.

6. Patterns and Mathematical Reasoning
A library visit one afternoon turned up so many wonderful math and pre-math books that I couldn’t leave without them. We used them as a jumping-off point to explore patterns and the concept of same and different.

I didn’t have pattern books specifically designed for very small children that day, so we made up our own activities — looking for patterns around the house, in the wallpaper and carpets, and making a caterpillar from colored construction paper circles. Everyone loves using glue. We then turned to same and different, using a book called ‘Same, Same’, which introduced items that looked different but shared something in common — stripes, size, or purpose. We played sorting games with puzzle pieces, toys, and household objects. The children had no idea they were doing math. They thought they were just having fun. They were right.

7. Math in Everyday Life
Fractions didn’t become real to me until I learned to cook. At school, they were enemies on a page. In the kitchen, making pies, they became friends I needed. That shift — from abstract to real — is everything.

Carpentry teaches algebra and geometry without ever calling them that. Sewing teaches measurement. Shopping teaches value and budgeting. When my Traveling Spark Station includes baking supplies, I talk through every measurement with my grands out loud: “We need one cup of flour — that’s a whole cup. Now we need half a cup of butter, so we only fill it halfway. We need one teaspoon of vanilla, but we’re making two batches, so we need two teaspoons.” A real “I am doing it” moment is the best story problem there is, and you can take that kind of learning anywhere.

8. Math for Preschoolers
The Traveling Spark Station visited preschoolers often, and math was always welcome there. Young children need a great deal of doing and saying before written numbers make any sense to them — and the good news is that preschool math requires no textbooks, no workbooks, and no special equipment.

Here is a conversation I had with three-year-old Jack one afternoon. I asked him to get six cookies. He counted out four and told me he had three. We laid them out together and counted — one, two, three, four. “You have four, Jack, but we need six. That means we need two more.” He got two more, we laid them alongside the first four, and counted all the way to six together. Then we did the same with marshmallows and M&Ms. He was learning to count with real objects in his hands, and he was perfectly happy the whole time.

We also sorted socks, put away groceries by category, made patterns with buttons and beads, and looked for patterns all through the house. The kids didn’t know they were learning math concepts. They thought they were just spending time together. And that, of course, is the whole point.

ARTS, CRAFTS & IMAGINATION

1. The Family Reunion Traveling Spark Station
Every other year, my Spark Station travels to our family reunion, and this has been going on for several decades. Reunions can be wonderful, exhausting, emotional, enlightening, and fun — often all in the same afternoon. We always set aside a specific room or cabin just for the Spark Station, available only a few hours each day, so parents aren’t tied down. It takes planning, but it’s worth it.

I choose crafts based on four things: low cost, simple materials, ease of creation across a wide age range, and minimal adult direction needed. Over the years, we’ve made name plates for bedroom doors, trinket boxes from popsicle sticks, painted birdhouses, nature journals, cardboard flower presses, God’s eyes, and run nature treasure hunts. The older kids make the same things as the littles and genuinely enjoy helping them. Even some adults have been known to pick up a craft. When one nephew was leaving and came to hug me, he said, “My girls told me they really love the craft lady.” That made my whole reunion.

2. Learning to Crochet
Be brave and try crochet or knitting in your Traveling Spark Station. Boys and girls both enjoy it, I promise. One family discovered this firsthand. Mom was teaching one of her twin girls to crochet when her two boys, ages 11 and 13, announced they wanted to learn too. She wasn’t sure it was appropriate for boys — until the 13-year-old got sick and his younger brother decided to cheer him up by crocheting his brother a white blood cell, complete with googly eyes and a tiny hatchet so the sick brother could hunt germs. Mom decided that hatchet-wielding white blood cells were manly enough. I have used the Traveling Spark Station to teach several of my own grands to crochet, and it has always gone well.

3. Fairies
The day before my Colorado grandchildren arrived for a visit, I found a perfect fairy ring hidden by a bush in our front yard. That settled the topic for the Traveling Spark Station. I showed them the ring and read them a poem my mother had read to my sisters and me as children — There Are Fairies at the Bottom of Our Garden. I told them a fairy ring marks the place where fairies danced in the night. We all knew fairies weren’t real, but we all wanted to pretend they were. My nineteen-year-old daughter, Kate, suggested we set out a little tea party for the fairies and see if they came back. The girls wanted to know how we’d be able to tell. “You’ll see the fairy dust,” Kate said. Late that night, I watched her sneak outside in the dark to sprinkle glitter across the table and around the ring, getting real joy out of every bit of it. The girls still talk about that evening.

Later that same summer, the Spark Station traveled to Yellowstone, where another set of grandchildren each built a fairy house in the forest, guided by the movie Kristen’s Fairy House, two wonderful memories from one simple topic.

4. Dragons
Dragons have fascinated me since childhood. I’ve read about their origins and studied the legends for as long as I can remember, so of course, they found their way into the Traveling Spark Station.

We spent a good stretch of time poring over dragon books together, looking at pictures of the magnificent dragons created for Chinatown parades, and talking about where the legends came from. I found wonderful dragon craft projects online, but they were more labor and material intensive than I wanted. So, I made up my own — a dragon with wings cut from a paper plate. Simple, inexpensive, and the kids loved it. When the projects online feel like too much, make your own. You know your children, and simpler is almost always better.

By now, you’ve seen the Traveling Spark Station in many different forms — a knitting project, a carpentry afternoon, a family reunion craft room, an imaginary fairy ring. Some of these ideas came from trips to the library. One came from a dead dragonfly on the balcony. Some came from just paying attention to what the children around me were already curious about.

That last point is important. The best Traveling Spark Station ideas don’t always come from you. They come from the child who said they wanted to make gingerbread, or the nine-year-old who pulled out his dad’s coin collection. Your job is to notice, to listen, and to be ready.

In Part 3, we open the door even wider. We’ll explore the natural world — oceans, insects, seasons, and the night sky. We’ll visit countries and people in history.

There’s so much world to share with the children you love. Let’s go explore it.

When my daughter, Jodie’s, children were young, I lived two blocks away. When I was caring for them in my home, they loved the Spark Station. But I wanted to connect more often, so for several years I would take my Spark Station traveling to their home. I didn’t stop there. I took it to Washington and Colorado to connect with my faraway grands. I used it at events with children. I wanted a better connection with all the children in my life. It came to be called the Traveling Spark Station.

This four-part series is for anyone who loves a child but doesn’t live with them every day — grandparents, aunts, uncles, family friends, anyone who wants to show up and really connect. The Traveling Spark Station is simply a basket, bag, or box filled with books, supplies, and simple activities built around a single topic. You choose the topic. You pack what you need. And then you go.

Over the years, I wrote dozens of articles about the activities I did with my grandchildren — the topics we explored, the crafts we made, the books we read, the messes we made, and the memories that stuck. This series pulls those articles together into one place. My grandchildren ranged widely in age, and the internet makes it easy to find activities on any topic for any age. Books matter too. Reading together, even with the littles piled in your lap, builds connection in a way that nothing else quite does.

So, dive in. What sparks you? What do you know will spark the children in your life? That’s your starting place.

JUST FOR FUN

Since the Spark Station is for fun, learning, and connection, not everything has to be useful. Some activities are simply for the joy of it.

1. Empty Toilet Paper Rolls
I spent a few months collecting toilet paper rolls for an event where I created a Spark Station for 140 children. When it was over, I had many tubes left and started pondering how to use them. I googled “toilet paper roll crafts” and then tossed a bunch in my basket. No matter the topic, the season, or the holiday, you can find a craft made from toilet paper rolls. Some are great for pre-teens, and your teens will love helping the littles. You’ll be amazed.

2. Empty Water Bottles
We had the same kind of delight with empty water bottles. A water bottle collage, a landscape in a bottle, a baby’s rattle, a bird feeder, the options are endless, and there is something for every age online. Save those bottles and have a fun family activity. Why not start with a water fight and then make a craft?

3. Pretend Play
I did something scary for the Traveling Spark Station: I played pretend. I have done crafts, sewing, cake decorating, and gardening with hundreds of kids. But imaginative play? By the time I was fourteen, I had completely stopped pretending. I would build fabulous play spaces for my siblings (I was the oldest of nine) and then step back and let them play. I did the same with my children. I watched and enjoyed it, but I never entered the game.

I decided to try. The Traveling Spark Station held books that could be acted out, and a pile of large fabric squares. We read several stories together and then acted out The Little Red Hen. It was an interesting afternoon, and I genuinely enjoyed pretending with them.

4. Doing Nothing Special
I don’t want you to think every Traveling Spark Station activity needs to be carefully planned and filled with fabulous ideas. Some days you’re tired. Some days, circumstances intervene. One day, I showed up with no library books, no internet research, and no topic in mind.

We made cinnamon snakes from packaged biscuit mix, not because we were studying snakes, but simply because the children love to cook. My husband was building an air gun shooting range and had cut out small wooden animals as targets, so we helped paint Grandpa’s animals. That was it. We had a lovely time, helped Grandpa out, and enjoyed being together. Sometimes that is exactly enough.

OUR BODIES

1. What Can a Body Do?
One summer, the Traveling Spark Station had no projects and no crafts — just pure outdoor fun and movement. I wondered about Maggie, who was five and had severe cerebral palsy. What she can do on her own is very limited. But she has a body, and she likes to use it, so we went ahead. We walked. We smelled the air. We fed the ducks. We watered the garden. We felt flowers, leaves, and prickly stickers. We waded in a stream at the city park, swung on the swings, jumped, and ran. Then the long walk home, squinting into the sun. We ended with the book Sleep, Little One Sleep by Marion Dane Bauer. Our bodies and our eyes were ready for a rest.

2. Learning About Bones
Learning about bones was a laughing good time. We played a bone identification game by tickling our rib bones, neck bones, backbone, and hip bones. We talked about the difference between skin and bones: bones hold us up, skin holds us together. Skin is soft and can tear; bones are hard and can break. We talked about keeping both healthy and strong.

For activities, we traced everyone’s body on large pieces of paper and drew in the bones: head, spine, arms, legs, hips, and chest. Hanging the finished bodies on the wall was the most exciting part. We also made a Q-tip skeleton, read three wonderful books, and yes — we found a use for those toilet paper rolls too. : )

3. Toilet Training
You can put anything in a Spark Station, including potty training support. Jodie asked me to come up with fun ways to reinforce progress for Jack, who was in the middle of training; Mary, who wasn’t ready yet; and Maggie, in her wheelchair, who never would be potty trained. I want to be honest, there’s no way to make this topic relevant to older children. Sometimes the Spark Station holds something just for one or two kids, and that’s perfectly fine. This tool is versatile.

I had potty training books, of course. Jack was absolutely riveted; his interest could not have been higher. Maggie practically had her nose to the page as we read a story about a girl and her potty. She wasn’t interested in sitting on one herself, but she loved the stories. For our activity, we made a paper potty train to hang on the wall with prizes taped above it. Jack got to move the train down the track each time he used the potty. Maggie and Mary, in their own stages, got to move it when they brushed their teeth.

4. Germs and Hygiene
Jack, Maggie, and Mary had all been very ill for two weeks, which seemed like a good time to learn about germs. We looked at pictures of germs, watched a funny video of germs with cartoon faces, and used yeast and sugar to show how fast germs multiply. We practiced hand washing while singing the Alphabet Song. We spent less than an hour together. There was some chaos and a lot of laughing. Worked out great.

READING & WRITING

I love to read. Being able to read matters deeply to me. I wanted my grandchildren to love reading. That’s one reason the Traveling Spark Station always carries books, and one reason family reading time is worth protecting.

1. Mother Goose
I had a book of Mother Goose rhymes and found some wonderful, themed lunch ideas the kids could help me make. I made do with what I had on hand rather than running to the store. As we ate our Humpty Dumpty lunch, we read rhymes. I had made a few toilet paper tube puppets ahead of time, and we acted out Little Bo Peep, Mary Had a Little Lamb, and Baa Baa Black Sheep. Then we made Humpty Dumpty finger puppets to play with while we ate. One grateful mom sent me a note afterward: “Mary Ann, you are such a genius. The nursery rhyme-themed lunch and the puppets look amazing. I had never thought of anything like that.”

For children over six, try letting them create their own Mother Goose book for younger siblings, or look up the surprising history behind the rhymes. Ring Around the Rosie is a great place to start.

2. Letter Recognition
I had planned a letter recognition activity for 1-year-old Mary,  3-year-old Jack, and 5-year-old Maggie. Then, at the last minute, I discovered I would also have a 10-year-old, a 7½-year-old, another 5-year-old, a special needs 4-year-old who was blind, a 13-year-old, and a 15-year-old. Yikes.

I pulled out books and asked the children what they had in common. The older kids had a lot of answers. We played a letter recognition Memory game with alphabet cards — Christopher, the 10-year-old, loved it. Maggie dove into the worksheets, which are her favorite, and the other 5-year-old and the 7½-year-old joined her, delighted to be playing school. Annie, the 13-year-old, took pictures for us. Jason, the 15-year-old, settled in with Pride and Prejudice. He and I had a great conversation about Great Expectations while the littles played their card game. The Spark Station connects people regardless of age. Every time.

3. Family History
A fun way to inspire children to read and write is to start with family history. My grands had a ball looking at photos and hearing stories about their parents when they were young.

Another mom, Annette, tried this with her older children. A scrapbooker by nature, she had originally planned to create a memory book for each child from everything she had saved over the years. Instead, inspired by the Spark Station, she let each child explore their own box of treasures. They spent the whole activity telling each other stories and peppering their mom with questions.

Compiling a photo album and labeling the pictures together is another wonderful idea. Even children who can’t read yet will enjoy this for short stretches. Put some family history in your Traveling Spark Station and let the children celebrate the story of their own lives.

4. Classic Stories
Pack a few classics in your Traveling Spark Station for whatever age you’ll be with. Classics spark imagination and a genuine desire to read in a way that few other books can. Two tips I learned from my friend Rachel DeMille years ago have stayed with me: first, read with the intention to interact, not just to get through a chapter. Ask questions. Talk about what’s happening. When my Spark Station traveled to my grandchildren in Washington, this was one of their favorites. Second, take a little time to learn about the book you’re reading, whether it’s The Three Little Pigs or The Secret Garden. Your questions and conversation will be more interesting.

5. Books That Change You
One book in my Traveling Spark Station that I return to again and again is The Hundred Dresses. It’s about generosity, charity, and kindness, told through the eyes of young girls who learned these lessons the hard way. This book was impactful to me as a girl and changed how I treated other people, and it still does, every time I read it. That is what a classic does.

Think about the books that have changed your way of being. Those are worth sharing with the children and grandchildren in your life.

6. Books for Teens and Young Adults
I still read children’s books and young adult novels, and I freely admit it. They are fun and often say more than adult books.

One book I picked up by accident was The Lost DaVincis. It wasn’t until chapter three that I realized it had been written by my friends Aneladee and Don Milne. That made it even better. You know you have a good book when it makes you think. If it makes you think, it will do the same for a young reader. I decided that if I were eleven, I would be waiting breathlessly for the sequel. What a perfect Traveling Spark Station book. If you want your kids to read, read with them. Talk about the books. Take them along wherever you go.

7. Fables and Tall Tales
Fables, tall tales, and fairy tales are wonderful Traveling Spark Station territory for children from littles to teens. I checked out a wonderful assortment from the library. Reading through them gave me activity ideas.

I chose fables from Bali, Zaire, Mexico, two from Native American traditions, and one from America. When I asked Jack what he thought a fable was, he replied, “A monster.” We had a good laugh, and then I explained that it was a pretend story, and that every country in the world has its own pretend stories. I spread out a large world map, and we found each country together — Jack and Maggie were too young to fully grasp maps and continents, but I wanted to plant the idea.

We had simple crafts connected to each country: a tipi craft, a game, and a coloring page. Despite being so young, both loved every minute. This topic is rich enough to stretch across several family activities. You could even eat a dish from each country whose fable you read.

You’ve just seen how much ground a Traveling Spark Station can cover, from silly toilet paper roll crafts to classic literature, from tracing bodies on butcher paper to acting out The Little Red Hen. Some of these activities took careful planning. Some happened with a box of biscuit mix and whatever was on hand. All of them mattered.

That’s the thing about this tool: it doesn’t have to be perfect to be meaningful. It just has to be yours: your curiosity, your presence, and your willingness to show up.

In Part 2, we’ll keep going. We’ll look at how the Traveling Spark Station can make math genuinely fun — yes, really — and how arts, crafts, and imagination open doors that worksheets never could.

You may be surprised how naturally these things travel.