Stick Forts and Brush Piles

We've been out exploring again and I wanted to share a fun activity that you can do if you have an abundance of sticks near your home - stick forts!  Kids love forts of all kinds, from those they create inside with chairs and blankets to little niches they find for themselves outside.  When I was young I lived in an apartment complex and one of the best things about it (besides having lots of kids to play with around - I always wanted to play school, if you can imagine that...) was that in the winter the plows would create massive piles of snow in the parking lot.  And, when I say massive, I mean MASSIVE - maybe 10 to 15 feet tall and three or four times as wide.  We quickly turned the snow piles into pretty elaborate snow forts, complete with a place to stock pile snow balls and dungeons.  This activity taps into that love of forts by creating a natural stick fort and in the process you can relate their new fort to how brush piles are used by small animals as both shelter and as a place to raise young.

Materials Needed:

• sticks of a variety of lengths - pretty easy, right?