Another fine, wet summer in the northwest, what to do cooped up inside once school is out... Griffin decided to break in his new bedroom with a
painting fest. He did manage to keep most of the paint on the designated 'drop cloth', painting everything from "an alien" to "a cave and those are the two eyes of a bear peaking out." He just kept painting pages until he had filled up the plastic, then started in on decorating an egg carton to be used for seed starts.
While working on cleaning the Craft Room, we came across a bunch of colorful plastic animal beads. He immediately wanted to put them in something to make a
Bead Shaker to entertain his baby sister. We quickly downed a couple of small water bottles, dried them out and began filling them with the animals and various other plastic beads.
When I suggested we make a
"Search and Find" bottle he spent the rest of the day collecting small items to include. I told him to look for things smaller than his thumb, and nothing too squishy. Rubber band okay, scraps of paper no. Once he placed his collection of various shaped beads, shells, legos, etc... into the bottle, we filled the rest almost to the top with some rice from the cupboard and glued the lid on. Now he wants to make a card with a list of all the things for people to look for.
This week's projects included finishing a
fleece blanket for the
Remembering Rowan Blanket Project (he recently learned to tie knots), coloring
wooden plant stakes, painting
magnets,
paperbag puppets, "
gooey bugs" in his
Creepy Crawler Machine, and
collages of pictures of his friends.
Inspite of the chaos in my
Craft Room, Griffin is usually very good about only using HIS craft supplies and asking before he gets into anything he is not sure about. But the other day while he and his friend Kate were "huntin' for clues", I discovered a trail of little green and blue foot prints leading into the bathroom (where they were hiding behind the toilet). They had managed to cover their feet in ink while her mom and I were busy in the front of the house with our new babies. What could have been a disaster led to a fun afternoon of water play as they were thrown in the bath, clothes and all, with old bars of soap. The ink wiped right up as well. Now off to
Michaels to raid the $1 aisle for more craft projects to keep these kidlets out of trouble... after we finish the coffee filter snow flakes Griffin just decided we should make.
Last week, Carissa and I arranged another Crafty Kids activity for the MOMS Club of Camas. With Father's Day approaching and a little internet search, Carissa found some fun crafts the kids could make for their Dads. Each child got to decorate:
We picked up plain baseball caps and small black river rocks from the Dollar Store, and puffy fabric paints from a craft store. Between us we already had paint pens (for the rocks), and supplies for making simple cards. As I have done with Valentine Cards, we pre-printed small cards with "Happy Father's Day" so the littlest kids could easily glue the message onto their cards and decorate the rest how ever they chose.
All of the children seemed to enjoy the crafts, and I am sure their Dads will appreciate something handmade just for them by their children, instead of yet another tie.
