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.
After hearing a lot about this craft I actually got to witnesses it a couple of weeks ago at a birthday party that my sons and I had the privilege of attending. Let me say right off the bat so that there’s no confusion, my older son (OS) loved this craft. In all honesty that made me love the craft too. Particularly the part that it wasn’t at my house.
The theme of this birthday party was construction, and as such there were lots of fun games involving toy trucks. One of them was painting with trucks. The set-up looked pretty easy. A large collapsed cardboard box was put on the ground and a disposable aluminum foil pan was filled with washable paint. Here’s a tip on the washable paint that I learned from this crafty mom: add soap to it to make it even easier to wash off later. Finally, there were toy trucks placed in the pans. The idea was that the children could take the trucks, run them in the pan, and then run them on the cardboard. Sounds like a good idea, huh? Read on, dear readers, read on.
As with most crafts, I feel this craft would be best when done with a garden hose waiting patiently to be used to handle the cleanup; also a good thunderstorm. Now, for the first problem: My older son (OS) is three and is able to be pretty neat when he works with paint. However, the younger children, not surprisingly at all, took great delight in sticking their hands directly in the paint. Then they would grab the trucks. The result was that OS ended up with paint on his hands, which then ended up on his pants and then somehow on me, on the neighbor’s dog, and in many other locations, even though his hands were never directly in the paint. To be fair, the hostess did warn us that this was going to be messy and to dress accordingly. The second problem was what I alluded to above: the children took delight in using the truck paint as finger paint. This means there is the potential as with all finger painting crafts to have paint everywhere. So years later when your child is posing with his prom date in front of the fireplace…okay I’m totally kidding, but still you’re not going to want to do this craft on a nice tablecloth or by a pile of clean laundry.
I would totally do this craft under the following conditions: 1) it’s outside 2) I have access to a working garden hose to hose down my children, any pets and all equipment used in this activity 3) it is about to rain, so that I won’t even need to turn on the the hose 4) it is a birthday party. I have to hand it to the hostess; this really was a fun craft for an outdoor birthday party.
As for the people who kept telling me to do this with my child inside the house? I think they’re nuts. I wouldn’t do it. It’s just too messy.
A. Elliot's Ratings: Ease of setup/cleanup (1-10 with 1 being most difficult): 2 Attention Getting (1-10 with 1 generating least interest; this excludes dogs): 8
