Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Anjali and Sophia tie dye their petticoats


The tie dyed newspaper was a bit of a disaster. Not that it wasnt fun to make. I had mised up blue, yellow and red food color in water, and the girls had a good time dipping their tied up newspaper in the  coloring. And when that kind of had its limitations (small container, large paper sort of thing), they got scoops from the kitchen to ensure that their papers were covered.

But after all that, the letters and newsprint still showed through, and I guess I wont be using it for goody bags anyways.

When we ran out of scrunched up newspaper (I had made 8), we fell back to our old standby for tie dying - shimmies. The girls had a number of white - off white shimmies - plain stuff that they could wear at home. Sophia had tie dyed one before, to interesting effects. Ofcourse, that had been two months ago, and the shimmy had been washed to be white again.

This time we went all out. Sophia dyed one shimmy a beautiful yellow, red and rust color combination. Anjali stepped in and tried out the blues and yellows, and ofcourse that shimmy became mostly green. It would take a number of washes but eventually the shimmies would fade back to their normal colors. In the meantime, the girls can wear them.

In addition to the activity itself, I think Sophia learnt another important lesson.

She was dying. There were atleast four containers of colors. At some point ofcourse, the dyeing also involved some kind of mixing of colors. Sophia, at that stage, ended up with a gold color, which she liked very much, and which, at some point in the process, Anjali pored on the floor to facilitate her painting process.

Sophia ofcourse threw a tantrum. She wanted more golden. Goodness knows how to get gold, and I only had red, so I gave her more red. She took it, and in ten seconds ran back into the kitchen "This is not gold color. Want gold color!!"

What set me off was that she was throwing a tantrum and crying and whining.

I knelt down to her level.

"Sophia. I am giving you a warning. Next time you want something, you ask. If you cry, I will give you one more warning and then I am closing the painting shop. Ok?"

"Ok!". She was very cheerful about the okay. Especially since she had discovered that if she mixed the colors around enough she got the shade of gold that she was looking for.

And to give her credit, she didnt.

And then the girls took all the rubberbands from the tie dying and washed them in the bathroom. Ofcourse, at some point therein, they morphed the rubberband washing game into the soup making game and by the time they were finished, they were both happy and tired and it was almost time for cereal and bed.   

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