A first almost full craft

I think this is some kind of a red letter day. We were working on yet another cushion for the bicycle seat. And this time, Anjali took the lead in the making of the cushion.

She drew on the fabric, colored it up and stuffed it with torn up pieces of foam. What impressed me was how she kept cooming back to it, while playing, after eating supper, and after playing with her sister. At one point, the foam ran out, and I had to cut up more. And all the while, she was lugging the half stuffed cushion behind her and when i took it from her, I found that she had taped the opening with masking tape, a step in the activity that I would never have expected of her.

I spend some time every day reading through different blogs for inspiration for activities to do with the children. My favorite are the artful parent, crafty crow, messy kids and the like. What always surprised me was how, according to these blogs, the children did the activities with lots of enthiusiasm and the activities ended up being perfect learning opportunities.

I should say that I have had a larger than my fair share of activities that didnt turn out as expected. There have been occassions when we had set up a huge free for all painting station for the children to explore and they painted for two minutes, and left such a huge mess on the floor to clean up. The same goes with sensory play or sewing or any such thing. It is often rather disillusioning when you take the trouble to set up an activity that the children are less then enthusiastic to do.

Sophia often tells me, "Mom, lets do an activity", and then she adds "A dry activity, not a wet activity", since she has had too much experience with me dunking the kids in the bathroom wht a load of water, bubbles and food coloring.

So yesterday, in parallel with the cushion stuffing, i also cut up a couple of my overflowing stash of milk cartons to make a small dollhouse. Sophia's job was to put toys in her house. She promptly brought along, not just her dolls, but also her animals, making the lower layer a doll house and the upper layer a zoo (what fun to live in a hose where the zoo is just a climb away!)

So my question is, what kind of activities get the best response out of the child? It seems to be an important question, because the last time I did cloth drawing with the kids to make the previous cushion, neither child was very interested. But this time, Anjali spent close to an hour drawing and coloring on the cloth with very brilliant colors.

Pictures to follow