I blame the weather. It has a lot to answer for. Twelve degrees in June, for pities sake. After a good run about at the play area my hands were numb and I couldn't face anymore Outside time. I couldn't admit defeat and break the gloves back out of their packed-up-for-summer stash.
Left with indoor options I wondered how we could best fill the lengthy gap between arriving home and tea. Then I remembered an optimistic trip to Hobby Craft some months back, fresh with ideas and inspiration for play. Somehow when I got it all home it just always felt too much effort to set up, and I was too nervous of our cream carpet, despite having endured the destruction resulting from Baby Led Weaning.
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| Dipping Action |
So to make up for my lack of outdoor bravery I raided the recycling box for card and paper to protect the table, carpet, and myself. For a moment I contemplated wrapping the toddler in newspaper as some kind of Guardian-as-fashion ensemble. I was certainly tempted - it was only the widely-ignored-in-this-house Sport section after all... But given toddler's Houdini tendencies I doubted its ability to prevent widespread descretation of the dining room and all its contents, so adopted the old-fashioned Newspaper as Carpet destruction-prevention method.
The Melissa and Doug paint we used comes with an age recommendation of 3+. Perhaps due to likelihood of a toddler Bake Off reconstruction? Fearless* we embarked upon our paint crusade, chopping up an old sponge for printing with, being too tight to fork out for something purpose-made.
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| Braving the 2 years + recommendation |
Given toddler's propensity to become bored after 4 seconds I cut out a couple of templates to blob paint around, so if Art Time was over rather promptly we still might have something to show for our troubles.
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| Template takes a battering... |
After receiving a good paint dousing whilst holding said template the finished result did actually resemble an object. My mid-print lectures on Why Colours Should Remain in Separate Pots, together with the pithy Why Not to Paint the Inside of your Nose were widely ignored. I can, however, advise that the posh paint was worth the pricetag, and even washed off the toddler/sponges/highchair/cat ...
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| Start to Finish |
*extremely fearful
what happened when you tried paints/art/craft with your littlies? disaster? artistic genius? or just some good old fashioned fun?!
