Self-Led Crafts

Well, after a month-long hiatus, we are back!  We got so caught up in all of our Christmas crafting and the holiday season that our posts have fallen behind!

As is typical in our house, illness of various types have been running through our house.  My husband had a cold, my daughter had surgery on her ears before Christmas and came home with a skin infection called impetigo, I caught a stomach flu; we're done!!  Hopefully that will be the worst illness we'll have for 2012!!  After all of that illness, I wanted to find something fun for my daughter to do.  She had been stuck at home with her impetigo, so I wanted to try something different for her.  Instead of laying out a specific craft like I usually do, I wanted her to have a self-led craft day.  So I put out some of her favorite things:

Construction Paper, glue, finger paints (we use Melissa & Doug), pom-poms, stickers, foam shapes and some pictures cut out of magazines for collages. 

I laid everything out on the table the night before, and I didn't tell Jellybean that I had things laid out for her; I waited for her to discover the invitation.  When she did, I was in the living room, and I suddenly heard this giant giggle from the kitchen as she discovered the goodies that were out for her!  We sat down immediately and started with the finger paints.  At first, she didn't want to get dirty, so we used paint brushes to get the paint out.  Then, we discovered that you can paint with a pom-pom!

We had to try it with several pom-poms :)

So much fun!!

One of the coolest parts of our painting experience today was mixing the colors.  She mixed blue and red "WOW!! I got purple!!"  Then we mixed red and yellow "Look, Mama!  It's orange!"  Then we mixed everything together and it was "Look at the brown!!"  She did this all on her own without any guidance from me.  We had watched a show called "Special Agent OSO", and this particular episode was about mixing paint colors to make different colors.  I couldn't believe she remembered the different color combinations!!  SO COOL!!  We also discovered that using a pom-pom in the various colors made a fireworks effect :)



We then moved on to foam stickers.  Usually when we do foam stickers, we just stick them randomly all over the paper.  This time, however, we used princess foam stickers that I got at the dollar store.  She had scenes laid out in her mind, and she got very upset when I added stickers that didn't "fit"!  I ended up just sitting back and watching her. 

First, she took a unicorn sticker.  She started sticking a princess sticker to it, and my first thought was "Why are you sticking those all together?  That's not right!"  But then, as I watched her, I realized that she was using her imagination!





For every princess, there was a unicorn to ride.  Then the princesses got princess hats, and they each needed a castle.  It was so cool to watch!  She was using her imagination and creating these little scenes.  And then she would make the princesses talk to each other, and they were all friends, and she had a design and intent in mind for each and every sticker on that page.  My little girl is growing up!!

This was a great lesson not only for Jellybean, but for me as well.  I learned to let her do her own thing and not worry about the end results.  She had a great time, and it was fantastic for her to be able to create and explore without and parental interference.  I was so impressed with the things that she came up with, and how much fun she had!  We will definitely be doing this again!!!