Raising kids in the DC suburbs affords such amazing opportunities:
the museums, the events, the classes, the shows—they’re all over the place. And
they’re awesome. Recently I’ve met several people who own and run websites that
have comprehensive calendars for these events and such, and special deals and I
am always finding out about more and more ways to get the boys out and doing
things. I love
taking them to museums and getting them involved with other
local kids and events. But plenty of the time we’re no different than parents
in a hot summer farmhouse in the Midwest or a rainy-day ranch in the West— we need to entertain,
engage, and teach and for whatever reason we're staying indoors. We’re parents in a
house and we’re not going anywhere.
A couple months ago, when I (hopefully and optimistically) felt
Cal and Clark were old enough to handle some kind of craft beyond coloring on
various surfaces, I started looking on blogs and parenting sites for craft
ideas for toddlers. The first one was cute—but I did absolutely all of the work, it took forever, and
the boys didn’t care a bit about it. The other ones I found were about the
same. They involved a lot of preparation and were just too complicated in
general. So dumb. Who are these people who think 2.5 year-olds can use scissors
and effectively place small googly eyes? Maybe people like our children’s librarian
with all her totally realistic expectations.
The other night I was looking at space and astronaut-y
crafts because the boys have been obsessed with space and astronauts and space
robots lately, and I found
this one. It seemed like something simple enough and
something they’re interested in so they might enjoy it. I was right! Yesterday I
had them make space shuttles with me. The whole process took maybe 20 minutes
from when they started coloring to the first blast off, and they did almost all
of it.
First they colored a piece of white paper and I put a name
on it that they picked out for their space shuttle. Our space shuttles were “Kitty
Cat” and “Roxy.” I wrote the names on them, rolled them up, and taped them.
Then I had them wad up two pieces of black construction paper—which they loved
doing—and stick them in one end of each of the tubes. I then took a chunk of
red construction paper and showed them how to use kids’ scissors for the first
time. We cut straight lines in the paper over and over and then I rolled it up
and stuck it in the end with a piece of tape. I then cut triangles out of other
white paper they had colored, had them use a glue stick in the middle, and
stuck it to the tube. The glue didn’t stick well so I slapped on a couple
pieces of tape. There you have it. A space shuttle! Easiest and most fun craft
I’ve done with the boys. They then spent the next fifteen minutes blasting them
off all over the house. And in a couple days when they’re not interested in
them, I will feel no guilt in throwing them out. We can make more, should the
mood strike.
The cool part about living here in DC, is that I can foster
their interest in space so much by taking them to the two wonderful Air and
Space museums, with their family, hands-on days and their amazing exhibits. I
can take them to the
Science and Engineering Festival where they will probably learn
more about science than I did in all of elementary school. But for yesterday, on
a day we were just having a normal toddler-y kind of day at home, some
construction paper and creativity was all we needed to make our afternoon
interesting.
I should add that this was also the day the boys discovered hair gel.
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Coloring the shuttles |
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the naming of the shuttles |
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Cal crumples up the black paper. |
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Clark learns to use scissors. |
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Fire up the engines! |
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Cal does a little freestyle glue-sticking. |
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Fierce space shuttles (?) |
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These represent a big step in craft-building at our house. |
Very cute. I want to do this with Nick too. Hurray for crafts.
ReplyDelete! We'll win them over yet!