Summer Craft Skills

Wednesday we spent our morning relaxing on the deck with crafts.  At first I just brought out the work table, some paper and markers.  Then the boys requested laces, beads, pasta, scissors, stickers, glue, and added a little flare to the table with their Flarp buckets and a snake.  They seemed to be really proud of the glued pasta craft of their names they brought home from preschool the day before, so I asked if they wanted to do another one.  Owen wanted to do his name again and Oliver wanted to do the letter H.  I watched in amazement over the next 20-30 minutes as they continued to work diligently and peacefully without my help.  All I did was write the letters on the paper with a marker and they traced them in glue almost perfectly on their own.  Owen was taking such good care handling the bottle of glue, gently dabbing it as needed and remembering to stand the bottle up when not in use, while Oliver took his time and precisely outlined his letter H with glue and beads.  I thought, "Who are these boys?"  It seems like only a few months ago I could barely let them handle a glue stick, much less a bottle of glue, without it being broken, smashed, or squeezed in excess all over the place.  Wow - they really have learned a lot in preschool this year!!  Which reminds me, about a week ago I was at the pool with the boys when another little boy and his mom asked Owen what his name was while I was at the far end of the locker room getting our things ready.  I heard him declare loudly, "My name is Owen.  O - W - E - N!" and thought that was cute.

But as I mentioned, this dream state only lasted about 20-30 minutes.  They finished their projects, attention spans broke and suddenly beads and pasta were being scattered everywhere and I scrambled to pick up their creations before they could apply the usual "destroy what I just created/built" mantra to them.  I am looking forward to doing lots of crafts outdoors this summer; we did some dot painting at the picnic table the next day.  More to come, and hopefully we'll have our DIY outdoor paint easel done soon!