While Grace has always loved art, in recent weeks, she has been especially eager to explore her crafty side and often busied herself making things. She's excited at finally being allowed to use scissors to cut, has fun gluing and making collages and is desperate to use sticky tape at every opportunity.
We've been trying something new during the afternoons in our house lately which has filled in the late hours on wintery days nicely... we called it our 'Crafternoon Time'. Firstly, Grace helps me wash and cut up some fruit for our afternoon tea and then we sit together at the kitchen table working side by side on crafty projects (if Sophie has woken early from her nap, she watches from her high chair whilst having afternoon tea or she crawls around playing on the floor next to us). My idea was that I would be spending quality time together with Grace teaching her new skills and also be able to work away alongside her on my own tasks, modelling skills for her at the same time and hopefully slowly completing a few projects of my own.
Yesterday, I set about working on making a colour matching game for Grace using paint sample cards. I'd initially seen the idea via Pinterest on the blog Crunchy and Green and had been meaning to try it out myself for some time. Our crafty time finally gave me the opportunity to do so. Grace sat opposite me creating a collage picture, having fun mastering the art of sticky tape and getting messy with glue.
In other crafty activities, last week, as part of us joining in with Claire's Bookworm Club for this month, I gave Grace a fish outline which she coloured in, decorated with polka dot stickers and glued sequins all over in an attempt to create her own version of the Rainbow Fish like the one in the book we had read. Grace is also really into letters and numbers at the moment, often pointing out the letters of her name in books and on signs so I printed and cut out a few different sets of the letters of her name in varying fonts and her task was to glue the letters of her name back together again.
I'm hoping that as my girls get older, there will be plenty more opportunities like these 'crafternoon' sessions for me to share other hobbies and passions of mine with them both. I love that fun-filled times like these are all part of being a Mum...
