craft and learning

My son is crafting again! I know I have told you all many times how crafts, art, and anything else like that is NOT his thing! I am so happy he is showing an interest! My son has many gifts the Lord has given him and I am very happy he puts them all to good use. I am not the kind of person who judges what kind of mom I am on how smart my child is. My son does very well with his school work that stuff comes easy to him. I could NEVER use that to judge myself. God gave him that gift. The Lord has lead me to try to get my son to try crafts, art, and music (the stuff my son struggles with). I think T works hard on using his gifts he has been given all the time without me telling him to so I feel it must be my job to try to get him to try things that are NOT easy for him. I don't have any plans on having him become an artist.LOL! I actually don't have any plans for him to become anyone but himself. KWIM? I feel that I should make things fun and encourage him to try the stuff that is hard for him. I hope to keep him grounded (not thinking he is better than others) in doing this. I know several very smart people and many of them seem to judge others on how smart they are. I don't EVER want my son to do this!!! I want him to SEE that things that DON'T come easy for him can come easy for others and that makes them (people like me) special people also. I want him to know that God gives us all wonderful gifts and I want him to be able to "see" the talents others have. I hope that he also knows from this that I DON'T love him because he does his papers well or because people call him smart! I love him for being him. I would love him JUST as much as I do now if he didn't know anything! I feel he pushes himself enough with his school work he doesn't need me to add to it. KWIM? I will not post pictures of his school work tonight because it always looks nice. Nice papers are something he does most of the time. He is still doing wonderful with it all. I will post instead some of his work that didn't come easy to him. I feel he is doing a wonderful job at trying to make things! Please keep in mind he is NOT a imaginative child or someone who likes crafts. I hope knowing that you will see the HUGE step he has taken.
They are wooden people. I have made little dolls from wooden pegs lots of times before so he didn't come up with the idea. He used fabric, fiber, and yarn for hair. He used fabric, ribbon, lace, markers, and paints for bodies and faces. I didn't ask him to make them he decided he wanted to make them in his own free time. He made them for his little sister! Such a wonderful kind child I have! The one above is very special to me. He made it for his Dad. He said it looks like his Daddy and I had to take a second look but after I did I do agree it does! I will have to write and show how his drawing has improved so much tomorrow. Sorry I don't have time to write more. I will try to get all caught up soon!

I might be in over my head with this one.

An online friend wrote about having a snowball fight with her children. I remembered when we did that with my oldest. When he was little we had tons of indoor snowball fights with wrapping paper, tissue paper, and newspaper. I talked to my husband the other night about all the fun things we did like that when my oldest was prek age we all have great memories of all the fun stuff we did together. We have no idea why we quit doing lots of it. I think life got busy with 2 children one of the children is school age and I think that we all got so busy we ran out of time. I feel bad that we haven't done all the same fun things with our little girl. She should be able to have the same fun learning time her big brother had. I started to think about ways to make fun NEW memories with her. A few weeks ago we started learning about winter. I have waited, and waited and waited more for some snow. I got tired of wating so I decided to make my own stacking snowman. After a day of thinking up ways on how to make one I decided to try paper mache and let my son help me. I will share my pictures but I want you to know I am NOT good at paper mache so this might not turn out! My goal is for it to be good enough for my daughter who is 1 1/2 to build. If it does work it will not be done until the beginning of next week because it takes forever to dry between layers. I have a feeling we will all laugh at this project! I have been known to do some things that others think of as crazy in the past but this is Even crazy by my thinking!

This is our stack of paper strips.


My son mixing our paste.


This will be the bottom of our snowman. I did this one.


This is the smallest one for the head my son did this one. It looks just as nice as the one I did and he is only 6 years old.



This is the 3 snowman body parts and our huge mess!



For anyone who hasn't done paper mache with a young child yet I want to tell you that YES the mess looks BAD. It only took 2 minutes to wipe up! It takes me 2 weeks to get all the glitter off our floors after a glitter craft so for me I think this wasn't a messy craft at all.

We did put a some more paper on them today. We have added paper rings to make them stackable. I will get pictures of it up tomorrow. I hope once they are dry they will stack. If not I will have to add more paper to shape them into the right shape. I am afraid that this crazy project might take me until spring to finish! LOL!

Salt Dough (baby craft)

Today we made ornaments from salt dough.
the recipe we use


1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup water

Dump together mix until you have a ball. Sprinkle four down before rolling out. Roll cut into shapes bake 22 deg for 2 hours. Let cool and paint.

Making the dough took me about 2 minutes. My son was able to roll out and cut them out. Family crafts are getting a LOT easier now that my son is getting older!


Below are pictures of my 17 month old girl making hers.

5 point star tries

It took me a few hours but LOOK! I finally figured out how to make a 5 pointed star! I looked a several places online. After a few hours of failed tries I went to www.enchantedlearning.com and it "clicked" for me. My son (the glitter king) decorated them. I should have told him to decorate the side that folds out not in. I spent WAY more time on them than I wanted to so this will have to do. If my son doesn't care why should I worry or fuss over it. I had NO plans to make stars this year.




This picture shows all my failed attempts. My son wanted stars so he could use his gold glitter. I let him glitter all the mistakes until I figured it out. I think he could have figured it out quicker than I did. I am embarrassed to admit this but this isn't my first time working on 5 point stars. I spent a entire day once before trying to figure it out. I think it was flag day a few years ago I wanted to show my son how to do it. I hope I can still remember how to do it next Flag Day.

More glitter art.

My son decided to try out our glitter glue. This is something that he hasn't done in a few months. I am not sure what all the pictures are of.....




This one he told me is a house covered with Christmas lights. I just asked him and he said they are all houses with Christmas lights on.

Snowing in our house!

I taught my 6 year old son how to make snowflakes over the last week. We tried in past years but he wasn't ready to do it. My sons hands are strong enough this year to do this so he is having LOTS of fun. I now have tiny paper snips all over the house and glitter sparkling on the table, floors, walls, counters, my children and just about the entire house! Glitter is a strange thing.... It helps a child see how beautiful his art work is and at the same time it makes a mom wonder how to clean up the trail left behind. Have you ever noticed the more you clean up glitter the more it spreads? It starts on a table and in no time it is all over the house. I guess the up side is I can say my house sparkles! LOL!



It is hard to see in the picture but this is about 50-100 large snowflakes. He is still making more! I hope we get some snow outside soon!



This is a close up of a few. I guess glitter doesn't show up well in pictures.


This is some of the small ones he is putting on the tree. He ran out of glitter. He is VERY happy Daddy is on his way home and bringing more glitter for snow. I guess cleaning up glitter is going to take me until Jan.

Sons Graham Cracker House.

This is my sons Gingerbread graham cracker house (one of many this season). It looks like I was out of the room to long and he ate a lot of it before I took the pictures! I guess I can't blame him! The one he made from a kit he didn't get to eat yet. When I gave him this stuff and told him he could eat it I guess I should have said I wanted a picture first!

This is the frame.


This is his decorations.

The finished part way eaten house!