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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Alex Elliot
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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
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
I'm very excited to introduce a "sub-blog" to Formula Fed and Flexible Parenting called Flexible Parenting: Crafts for the Clueless. This will be an erratically maintained write-up of crafts that I try, see or hear others trying, or read about in a magazine. I will rate each craft based on a complex algorithm that will graph ease of setup and cleanup against its ability to hold the attention of a child (specifically AT LEAST one of my children). If you like to make your children's Halloween costumes, cakes from scratch, and other elaborate crafts this is not the blog for you. I'm posting the first post on both blogs. After that I will only post the crafts on the Crafts for the Clueless blog, but I will let you know when it is updated.
When my older son (OS) was 18 months old, an occupational therapist told me about this "amazing" craft. Toddlers really like different textures as well as different sensations like warm and cold. Her idea was to take cool whip (this can also be done with shaving cream) and to spread it on a table or high chair tray (presumably while the child is in the high chair) and let the child play with the cool whip. Alternately, (environmentally friendly people skip this sentence) you can cover a section of your table with saran wrap to make for an easy clean up. As an extra bonus, dye the cool whip using food coloring. To hit the ultimate level of excitment, she suggested that you then let your child smear the cool whip on the front of the dishwasher door. Yes, you did read that right! She also suggested filling the bathtub with jello, but I nixed that one as soon as she finished telling me about it.
I was okay with parts 1 and 2: buying cool whip and adding blue coloring. This was the very first craft that I had ever done with OS and I was quite excited about it. I carefully prepared it and put it on a low table so that he could have hours, or at least 15 minutes, of fun while exploring the neat texture of the cool whip, the cold sensation, the blue color and the sweet taste. OS had no interest in it whatsoever(although he loved doing it using shaving cream at community playgroup where it was a big hit with the kids). Not wanting to pressure him, I quickly backed off, but left the craft out for him to enjoy at his convience. Then I left to run errands. When I came back my husband informed me that one member of the family had really enjoyed my craft. I was beaming from ear to ear. I had achieved motherhood perfection by choosing the absolute best first craft for OS. My husband quickly burst my bubble when he said "Gandalf loved it!" Apparently our DOG had eaten it.
In terms of crafts, this one was relatively easy to setup. As a concern with using shaving cream, if your child gets it in his eyes, it will sting. Obviously you don't want him to eat it either. I have heard of people doing this craft with pudding as well. Particularly with chocolate pudding, this sounds like a nightmare with possible laundry treatment. The two parts that really made me the least interested in repeating it were the need to stock foodstuffs that I don't ususually have, and having a sticky child and table. My only tip would be to do it right before bathtime.
A. Elliot's Ratings: Ease of setup/cleanup (1-10 with 1 being most difficult): 4 Attention Getting (1-10 with 1 generating least interest; this excludes dogs): 1
I bet my dog would love this craft. Don't know about any human family-member. :-)
-J