I have one very creative and curious four and a half year-old. I find myself looking for activities to fill the late afternoon hours while his brothers sleep and he just wants to chat, create, or “do something Momma.” Recently Cashel has really grown in the area of focus and in his pure love of all things creative.
That means my repertoire has also had to grow. I thank God for the dollar store’s craft section, and easy Pinterest ideas. He gets to take snack to school tomorrow so I made a quick stop at the dollar store with the boys to grab fresh paint, clothespins, pipe cleaners, and googly eyes. The leftovers will be added to his “Cashel’s Creations” bin.
I recently consolidated craft supplies from all over the house and threw away so much that was just not getting used. Now that it’s all in one organized bin the kids are just drawn to using it. It’s fun to watch!
For this activity Cashel got to paint both sides of the clothespins (with a break for dry time between the sides) and glue on the googly eyes. I love the “quick dry” craft glue I found at the dollar tree! It let him do the gluing himself rather than me having to use a hot glue gun.
I found my helper MIA when his Papa got home from work because he headed to the garage to help him work on our chicken coop. But then we stuffed snack sized Ziploc bags with a quarter cup of fishy crackers and about eight or nine red grapes.
The nice thing about this snack is that we really could have picked anything to go on either side of the Ziploc bag. Being sensitive to allergies, preferences, or just creative fun colors you could select a real variety. And dividing the stack of using the clothespin keeps the moisture of the grapes away from the crackers so you really can’t have two very different items in the snack.
Since Cashel has a fairly small class we are able to do lots of fun things that may not be possible in future years. It’s been a lot of fun to create with my boy. He also gets to hand out the snacks and “serve” his classmates with a friend/helper so he really looks forward to taking them with him each month.
Here’s to fun, seasonal, creative school snacks!
Oh you guys he was so excited and couldn’t even take his eyes off the snack. 🙂 Makes all the extra mess and time worth it. Do you have something that you have in common with your kiddo, but it’s significantly more challenging to engage in that activity together? Cashel and I both love to create; but I often feel like it’s easier, and more peaceful, to do the creating on my own. The truth is though when I take the time to do it with him it’s always worth it.
