Getting Crafty

It's no surprise to anyone reading this blog to learn that I enjoy working on a variety of different crafty pursuits. One of the things I was most looking forward to doing with Laurie, was exploring some of these hobbies with him.

I have to admit, I was expecting it to be a little while before he was big enough to do things like paint, or colour, but he's surprised me (as he always seems to) and is starting to show an interest in this sort of stuff already.

We took him to a dedication service for the children who had been christened this year and part way through the service we took him up to the Sunday School session. It was a neat little activity about lighthouses and we cut and stuck and Laurie chewed on the plastic cup I was decorating to look like a lighthouse. To be honest, he's still a little small for cutting and sticking, but he seemed to think that the black paper was tasty.

What did surprise me was how interested he was in the pens. So after a few minutes of trying to distract him, I handed him an uncapped pen and the Sunday School teacher passed us a sheet of blue paper. And he had a pretty good time bashing the pen about on it and even made some lines with me guiding his hand.

Which prompted a new activity at home last week.

That's a card we made for his godfather.

I cut out the heart shape, laid out a selection of felt pens and let him pick which colours he wanted to use. He kept returning to the same three pens several times; orange, dark green and dark blue (though the dark blue only made it onto the paper once). Again, I guided his hand and let him do his thing. The heart is creased because after a while he got grabby with it, letting me know he'd had enough of playing with the pens.

That's when his attention turned to my big pack of construction paper. That was a Christmas gift from Mr Click a couple of years ago. Normal 30 year olds get things like jewellery or make up; I still get excited about things like 50 sheets of thick coloured paper!

I flicked through, showing him all the different colours and he got really excited about this shade of blue. So I whipped it out, folded it in half, and stuck the heart on the front.

Voila! Instant card!

The whole activity lasted maybe ten minutes, but it's prompted me to look for some other crafty and slightly more structured activities to do with him.

Maybe it's because of the whole 'training to be a teacher' thing. But I feel like it's easier to come up with fun things to do if there's some sort of idea behind it. I love doing the sensory play stuff because I have a great time coming up with ways to sort his toys (colour, size, texture, type of object) and it's always exciting and new to see how he responds to that day's selection.

And these little arty activities mean I get to say I'm doing things like 'teaching him about colour' and 'developing his fine motor skills', but honestly? It's mostly an excuse for cutting and sticking and coloured paper!