Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Marathon Crafter = Dilemma

Minding kids can cost you a lot.  Whether it be your money, your time or your patience, they would take it all if they could.  But I never realized how much kids can waste if you don't pay attention.  Coco is ALWAYS making things, he says he invents them but really he just takes arts and crafts to a whole new level.  He gets home from school, grabs a roll of scotch tape, a pair of scissors and a magic marker and he is unstoppable until bedtime.    About 10 "masterpieces" can be created in one afternoon.  He doesn't really seem to care what he uses to create them; Husband left a gas station receipt next to a  highlighter on the table for about five minutes and returned to find  a fluorescent yellow drooling three-headed monster on it. Books, bills, boxes, nothing is safe...

A trip to the office supply store can cost me over 100$ if I don't pay attention just to support his hobby and the daycare kids with craft stuff.  Enough is enough I say!   This week, I started gathering everything I find around the house that Coco and the daycare kids (aged 3, 2 and 20 months) can use to create their artwork.  The craft corner is filling up and the kids aren't complaining that there are no pre-cut foam shapes either!  I found old paper plates in the kitchen that were used to make paper masks and turtles, empty toilet paper rolls and egg cartons also tickled their imagination.


We got a huge bag of empty envelopes and cardboard sheets from a family member that works at a store where they sell greeting cards.  It seems that the card companies take back the unsold cards but tell the stores to dispose of the cardboard labels and envelopes.  I happily filled up the craft corner quite nicely with the brightly colored envelopes and started a scrap paper box so the kids could have paper to draw on.  

Its hard to comprehend just how big a child's imagination actually is.  An old box, some strings and a few buttons keep most kids busy for hours.  As parents we tend to forget that we don't need to buy them every little craft trinket out there; they'll find things around the house that are way cooler to them than anything we could buy in the store.

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