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artsy craftsy sciencey
Apr. 19th, 2011 03:05 pmDon't you just love those mornings when your child is really interested in computer games? You can get so much more done than usual. Not that I have accomplished that much anyway, as I chose to sleep in this morning instead of getting up before M left for work, and E woke up immediately after he left. We had just a few minutes of peace and quiet before she started crying for her daddy. She cries for him nearly every morning. It's pretty rough on us all.. but especially me. ;)
I just deleted an entire paragraph because I always write about this so I thought you could use a break. Summary: I need to work on my house.
I'm thinking about going swimming with Evie this afternoon, although I have not told her this because I am not INSANE. I was going to say that I couldn't go until 4:00 or 6:15 anyway but I just looked at the schedule to get those times, and turns out there's also open swimming from 12-2. I am incapable of changing my plans on such short notice, however, so i'll have to wait. (It was 12:07 when I realized it.)
Teaching scissor skills is very frustrating for me. It's so EASY to me and I know that it requires a lot of fine motor skills and is therefore pretty hard for the little ones but it's boring. . But I kind of hate actually doing those scissor skill practice sessions. I'm always afraid she's going to cut herself or me.
You know, I seem to get just far enough into any subset of the parenting world to find out some of the elite theories from the "we have too much free time" group, which therefore really messes with my enjoyment of that particular subset. I know that sentence doesn't make a lot of sense, bear with me. In this case, I found out recently that the time and effort I put into crafting with Evie is a waste of time.. or maybe that's just how I took it. As with every other topic under the sun, there are a lot of blogs devoted to kids crafts. I read a few of them for ideas. We don't necessarily do a project EVERY day but, I try, and on days when we're all set up at the kitchen table, we might do several projects. Evie enjoys them and it's something that we enjoy doing together and it kills plenty of time. I was reading a few blogs the other day that were making a big deal out of the difference between Arts and Crafts. See, if you're at all interested in what the project turns out to be, it's a craft. If you're not, the child can just be "exploring textures" and "stimulating creativity" and "engaging in process-driven artwork". I guess that it's not completely untrue, but it's also, in my opinion, mostly pretentiousness. I mean, sure, I give Evie plenty of time to throw paint on the paper without commenting much on what she's making, but I will also give my input on how to do stuff when I think it's justified, because I personally don't believe in making her renvent the wheel on every single project. Yes, she could probably figure out on her own that if she put glue on the corners of her popsicle stick, she could make them stick together, if she was interested in doing so. But if I SHOW her how to use the materals I provide and then let her go forth with putting them together how she wants to, then I don't necessarily think that the "crafting" label is something to hide from. And sometmes it's just fun to follow someone's directions and end up with something kid-made and cute. Oh, and don't forget! If you're not consciously trying to figure out and plan for what the child is supposed to get out of this activity, it's probably just a waste of time! I am over-simplifying their arguments, of course, but it just sort of irritated me that there was yet another parental superiority thing. I mean, it's not enough that you provide one-on-one interaction and let your child make a mess out of your kitchen every day. It has to MEAN something, too!
Well, that was unexpected. There's always someone out there waiting to make sure you know what a crappy parent you are, right? I was annoyed by the topic but not particularly sensitive about it. I rather feel like a good mom when I set out a project for the kiddo.
Speaking of projects, some of her favorite projects are the science experiments we do. Might I suggest that if your kid doesn't like crafts, you might interest them in sciencey projects? We did the celery stalk in a cup of colored water (hint: super-dark colors work best) last week, and the cleaning pennies thing last week. We used three different stalks of leafy celery in a red cup, a blue cup and a dark dark purple cup.. after a few hours the leaves start turning colors. I always do some explanations of scientific principles (in this case, the celery is drinking the water up, like through a straw, to feed the little leafies. She's three, I don't have to get very advanced.) Her very favorite experiment is to put a layer of milk in a pie pan and then add drops of food coloring around the pan. Then you can put one drop of dish detergent into one of the food coloring dots and the whole thing starts swirling away (especially if you blow on it.) Google it. It's a fun project.. she's done it several times because she keeps asking me about it and eventually I cave and let her try it again. :) I have mostly been coming up with them from remembering things we did in school but I may look for library books and ask Google for more ideas soon. She loves stuff like that.
I just deleted an entire paragraph because I always write about this so I thought you could use a break. Summary: I need to work on my house.
I'm thinking about going swimming with Evie this afternoon, although I have not told her this because I am not INSANE. I was going to say that I couldn't go until 4:00 or 6:15 anyway but I just looked at the schedule to get those times, and turns out there's also open swimming from 12-2. I am incapable of changing my plans on such short notice, however, so i'll have to wait. (It was 12:07 when I realized it.)
Teaching scissor skills is very frustrating for me. It's so EASY to me and I know that it requires a lot of fine motor skills and is therefore pretty hard for the little ones but it's boring. . But I kind of hate actually doing those scissor skill practice sessions. I'm always afraid she's going to cut herself or me.
You know, I seem to get just far enough into any subset of the parenting world to find out some of the elite theories from the "we have too much free time" group, which therefore really messes with my enjoyment of that particular subset. I know that sentence doesn't make a lot of sense, bear with me. In this case, I found out recently that the time and effort I put into crafting with Evie is a waste of time.. or maybe that's just how I took it. As with every other topic under the sun, there are a lot of blogs devoted to kids crafts. I read a few of them for ideas. We don't necessarily do a project EVERY day but, I try, and on days when we're all set up at the kitchen table, we might do several projects. Evie enjoys them and it's something that we enjoy doing together and it kills plenty of time. I was reading a few blogs the other day that were making a big deal out of the difference between Arts and Crafts. See, if you're at all interested in what the project turns out to be, it's a craft. If you're not, the child can just be "exploring textures" and "stimulating creativity" and "engaging in process-driven artwork". I guess that it's not completely untrue, but it's also, in my opinion, mostly pretentiousness. I mean, sure, I give Evie plenty of time to throw paint on the paper without commenting much on what she's making, but I will also give my input on how to do stuff when I think it's justified, because I personally don't believe in making her renvent the wheel on every single project. Yes, she could probably figure out on her own that if she put glue on the corners of her popsicle stick, she could make them stick together, if she was interested in doing so. But if I SHOW her how to use the materals I provide and then let her go forth with putting them together how she wants to, then I don't necessarily think that the "crafting" label is something to hide from. And sometmes it's just fun to follow someone's directions and end up with something kid-made and cute. Oh, and don't forget! If you're not consciously trying to figure out and plan for what the child is supposed to get out of this activity, it's probably just a waste of time! I am over-simplifying their arguments, of course, but it just sort of irritated me that there was yet another parental superiority thing. I mean, it's not enough that you provide one-on-one interaction and let your child make a mess out of your kitchen every day. It has to MEAN something, too!
Well, that was unexpected. There's always someone out there waiting to make sure you know what a crappy parent you are, right? I was annoyed by the topic but not particularly sensitive about it. I rather feel like a good mom when I set out a project for the kiddo.
Speaking of projects, some of her favorite projects are the science experiments we do. Might I suggest that if your kid doesn't like crafts, you might interest them in sciencey projects? We did the celery stalk in a cup of colored water (hint: super-dark colors work best) last week, and the cleaning pennies thing last week. We used three different stalks of leafy celery in a red cup, a blue cup and a dark dark purple cup.. after a few hours the leaves start turning colors. I always do some explanations of scientific principles (in this case, the celery is drinking the water up, like through a straw, to feed the little leafies. She's three, I don't have to get very advanced.) Her very favorite experiment is to put a layer of milk in a pie pan and then add drops of food coloring around the pan. Then you can put one drop of dish detergent into one of the food coloring dots and the whole thing starts swirling away (especially if you blow on it.) Google it. It's a fun project.. she's done it several times because she keeps asking me about it and eventually I cave and let her try it again. :) I have mostly been coming up with them from remembering things we did in school but I may look for library books and ask Google for more ideas soon. She loves stuff like that.
