During childhood, my favorite small building materials were Dominoes. We didn't really have enough of them for me to make extensive structures, but I definitely remember making enclosures, kind of like imaginary courtyards. I think I sometimes put my lavender-haired troll inside them, but the building was the fun part—I didn't do much playing with dolls.
At the beach, I think my favorite thing to build with damp sand was a sort of bridge/tunnel—I would dig a hole about 5 inches deep and significantly longer than one of my feet. Then I'd stretch out one of my feet in the hole and cover that foot's ankle with sand, up to the level of the sand surrounding the hole. Then, the challenge was to geeeennnnntly extract that foot, leaving the sand bridge arched over the tunnel underneath.
Another thing I remember was that I once took a piece of hard local clay that had been thrown up by street excavations (or possibly by landscaping—I forget), and gradually ground it into a shallow (and very thick-walled) little bowl shape, by rubbing it against rough cement edges or outcroppings that had been left exposed by the excavations. I was proud of making it, but I incautiously left it unprotected, and a neighbor kid broke it.
On a larger scale, my brother and I both enjoyed building indoor blanket forts by draping a big extra bedspread (I think it was a bedspread) over dining room chairs.
I actually did some crocheting and embroidery and "spool knitting" and sewing as a kid, too, but those experiences felt really different from playing with sand or dirt or Dominoes or chairs and bedspreads.
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At the beach, I think my favorite thing to build with damp sand was a sort of bridge/tunnel—I would dig a hole about 5 inches deep and significantly longer than one of my feet. Then I'd stretch out one of my feet in the hole and cover that foot's ankle with sand, up to the level of the sand surrounding the hole. Then, the challenge was to geeeennnnntly extract that foot, leaving the sand bridge arched over the tunnel underneath.
Another thing I remember was that I once took a piece of hard local clay that had been thrown up by street excavations (or possibly by landscaping—I forget), and gradually ground it into a shallow (and very thick-walled) little bowl shape, by rubbing it against rough cement edges or outcroppings that had been left exposed by the excavations. I was proud of making it, but I incautiously left it unprotected, and a neighbor kid broke it.
On a larger scale, my brother and I both enjoyed building indoor blanket forts by draping a big extra bedspread (I think it was a bedspread) over dining room chairs.
I actually did some crocheting and embroidery and "spool knitting" and sewing as a kid, too, but those experiences felt really different from playing with sand or dirt or Dominoes or chairs and bedspreads.