I am pretty much getting to the point where doing "crafts" is no longer enjoyable. The main room of our house looks like this :
and after 30 minutes of vaguely fun play, I am left with all these popsicle butterflies to store somewhere, and then to feel guilty about tossing away!
We need to take all this mess and energy and do something much more meaningful, and what keeps coming up for me is cooking and baking and possibly indoor gardening. After all, if we are going to completely obliteate our dining room everymorning, why not get some bread or some seedlings out of the deal?
Tell me what you think!
8 comments:
Oh no, and here I was desperate for the time when Gage is old enough to do crafts...I have all kinds of cool ideas and things I want to make with him. I wanna learn stuff tooo........whine whine whine =) Got some neat flashcard/spiral things with numbers and letters, but it's fun and Gage seems to really like the numbers one. He counts to 10.
I think--no I am certain--that I under-explained myself. Sometimes I get so caught up in the idea that "everyone" has four kids, and that everyone's kids are messy and getting too old for glue sticks...
Crafts have been the basis for most of our funtimes as far back as I can remember. Glue, scissors, paint have been reality for like 8 years. I am just getting to a new point with my kids where, due to their personalities, they would be much more enriched by making something "real". I look at the mess made by, like I say, paper butterflies, and for us, it is getting out of hand. We as a family want to cook and bake and so I think we will head in that direction.
Please dont ever think I am against crafts, you and your 2 year old and new baby have years of paper butterflies ahead! Promise!
:)
Yay, paper butterflies! =) I'm so looking forward to these things I used to make when I was a kid where you take a cut out of an animal, like a duck or something...the cut out is on that weird manilla file folder material. Then you take a bunch of different colors of one and two in squares of tissue paper. Get a big ol' pile of glue and some pencils. Then you take the pencil eraser, wrap the tissue square around it, dip the end in glue, and stick it on the cut out...you do this about 500 times and it's an awesome 3-D animal...I still have the first one I ever made...I have been waiting a ridiculous amount of years for a chance to make more, I'm a nerd.
That sounds really cute. I just want to bake I guess, and I have it in my head that it is messy or hard. But then I look at the obliteration that is made by 20 minutes of glue/paper fun and I think "shoot, we could have made 6 dozen oatmeal cookies"
I dont know.
I need a maid.
I need a maid, nanny, wife, and assistant. Today I bought stuff, we can't afford it...but it made me feel better. Maybe I should color or glue sticks together. Fingerweaving is fun...where's the yarn?
Fingerweavig is actually the favorite pasttime of my son, Mickey--when he is not playing GranTurismo4, the car video game that rules his universe. He has made loooooong fingerweavin chains and we actually wove them together and made a scarf that he actually wore :)
We did crafts yesterday--made kites. I guess we wont ever stop. I just wish we were making something other than a mess sometimes. I know that sounds mean. Its the mixed ages. I have 2 that need to just experiment with products and two that need to learn stuff like knitting or different paint techniques or photography or paper mache or...oh I dont know. Nobody "needs to" do any of that. I just want a helping hand. Or like you said, 4 helping hands. I want to do messy baby time and then the imaginary lady takes the babies away so I can then do big kid thing with the big kids. Then the other magic lady takes them all away so i can clean it all while Chef makes lunch.
I know someday I'll be in your same situation. Gage and Logan will be in roughly the same "class" when I'm homeschooling them, but for my future kids the age difference will make things challenging.
Fingerweaving is so awesome...I used to wear mine as scarves too. =)
Anyway, Gage is officially two....he learned/said three new words/phrases yesterday...guess I'm doing an okay job with the homeschooling...so glad he finally says "all done" and "alright" and "get the ball!" Though the best one is pointing at my breast and yelling, "Oobie...oobie!"
Hey, Joy,
I saw a cookbook at Barnes and Nobles last summer called, "cooking rocks!" that was a cookbook aimed at mama's or papa's and kids cooking together--it was supposed to be fun recipes that kids would allegedly not only enjoy making, but also want to eat and be healthy.
I never did buy a copy, but I know what you mean about the craft table/box. I get very frustrated when I find myself throwing out almost a whole box of notebook paper with just scribbles on it, or leftover pipecleaners and what not. I would rather cook, too, or build a birdhouse we can put outside rather than so much little stuff that ends up in the trash too quickly....
More later...we're back from Tennessee....yippee!!
Barb
Post a Comment