By Elise, Inspiration Surrounds, Creativity Abounds
For me the most difficult thing about crafting with a three-year old, a one-year old and often a newborn strapped to the front of me, is . . . depending on the day a number of things could be inserted here, but for now I am going with . . . coming up with ideas to keep our one-year old, Blake, engaged for more than three minutes. So far, I have hit upon a few old faithfuls that do keep Blakie happy and busy - a winning combination in my book.
While Blake does enjoy painting and making his own collages, he often loses interest a lot sooner than Savvy (which is to be expected given his age), so these are some of the things I have on hand and usually buy us more time. Also, I find that when Blake has a little "break" from painting he will often come back to it and ask for some more paint.
When we are painting I have a container full of different materials (often household items) that can be used to paint with, items such as string, sponge pieces, bubble wrap etc. I find that this variety keeps him engaged a little longer.
Our dot stampers are very popular at the moment. Once Blake has finished stamping with them he likes trying to take the lids off and on. We also go through lots of dot stickers around here! He can peel them off the paper himself and apply them. I try to mix it up when it comes to using the dot stampers and applying the stickers. Sometimes he may use the stickers on plastic lids and containers, other times he may use the stampers and stickers on a paper towel tube or cupcake wrappers. On other occasions, I will wrap up a box in foil and he will put stickers on that. Often we can use these bits and pieces in a future craft project
What works best is coming up with ways to differentiate an activity. For example, if Savvy is making a collage (she likes to use lots of glue) I often give Blakie a sheet of contact paper and he will happily select different textured materials to stick onto his contact paper.
Elise is a Baby Buncher of three beautiful babies in Australia. As a former secondary school teacher and now SAHM, she writes a blog called Inspiration Surrounds, Creativity Abounds, where she writes about what inspires her with play, arts and crafts. For more on this topic, check out her site.
** This post has been reprinted with her permission.
Swich to wordpress, make your blogger nicer. -My 2 cents
Posted by: rc helicopter | Dec 07, 2011 at 11:37 AM