This is a part of Formula Fed and Flexible Parenting. It is an erratically maintained write-up of crafts that I try. I rate each craft based on a complex algorithm that graphs ease of setup and cleanup against its ability to hold the attention of a child. If you like to make your child's Halloween costumes, cakes from scratch, and other elaborate crafts, this blog is probably way too simple for you.
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Name:
Alex Elliot
Home:
MA, US
About Me:
Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 3.5 year old and a 1 year old.
My post on rice made me recall this craft. When my son was about 9 months old, one of the parenting magazines described an egg shaker craft. We already owned a ton of rattles. We obviously could not manage without just one more, particularly one that I had crafted. How does the craft work? Basically you take a plastic Easter Egg and fill it with a little uncooked rice. Sounds easy, right? You bet. But is it a good craft?
The first problem was that I didn’t own any Easter eggs so I had to go buy them. You can’t just buy one egg, however; you have to buy a whole pack. I think I ended up with a million plastic eggs, 999,999 of which were subsequently donated to our church. Of course at the time I was the parent of an “only” child. If you have other children or nieces and nephews, there’s a pretty good chance you can get your hands on at least one egg leftover from a community spring time egg hunt etc.
The rice was easier to secure, since we already had that in the house. So what was the problem? For choking hazard reasons, you’re not supposed to secure the egg with a piece of tape (for the same reason that you’re supposed to take the band-aids from shots off your baby right after they leave the doctor’s office.) You also can’t use glue because babies put everything in their mouth so first they would lick all the glue off which would be a health hazard and second, with the glue gone, there would be nothing left to secure the egg just letting the rice free. Thus, I just gave OS the egg as it was.
Despite the fact that OS had numerous well-made rattles, he absolutely loved this egg. No surprise there really. He loved shaking it, and shaking it and shaking it, and uh oh…the egg opened and there was rice everywhere. Talk about a choking hazard. I closed the egg and OS continued to play with it. Then at some point someone stepped on it, or it dropped it too hard on the floor or maybe the dog got it, and now in addition to having rice everywhere there was cracked plastic.
The set up / clean up score is a little tricky for this one. If I had had the eggs to begin with, this would have been one easy craft. Likewise, if I had paid closer attention to what happened to the egg, the plastic wouldn’t have broken. However, I still had the issue with the egg opening, and rice appears to multiply when it comes in direct contact with the floor. Thus I think I would have to give it an average of 6.
If nothing else, I felt like a supermom because I had done a craft “with” my 9 month old.
A. Elliot's Ratings: Ease of setup/cleanup (1-10 with 1 being most difficult): 6 Attention Getting (1-10 with 1 generating least interest; this excludes dogs): 10
