inspiration.

“Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.”

~ Albert Einstein


.

accessible craftiness.

While we love whole end-to-end crafty projects, I also love seeing kids just play and explore with materials. Something interesting always happens. We like to keep a few baskets of supplies out all the time on our dining room table - markers, pencils, beeswax crayons, kid scissors (funky edging scissors are fun too), bits of patterned/colored paper, blank notecards, glue sticks, stickers, lined notebooks, sketchbooks. This stuff is used ALL the time. I also like to keep things interesting by adding something new (rotating supplies) to the baskets every few days, so that they have something to experiment with. Things like paper clay, modeling beeswax, stamps and stamp pads, paper crimpers, decorative hole punches, blank storybooks - something different to keep it fresh. When my boys were toddlers, they had access to fewer (age-appropriate) supplies - as they get older, more items can be added to the baskets.

We tend to do a few craft based projects each week which tie into the season or what we are reading/working on that week. The boys then usually also make something every day with this pile of supplies. They write cards to family members or friends, make tickets to their shows, draw menus for their cafe, write wish lists or letters to me, make signs, create 'cartoons', or just scribble and cut and make a big fun mess.


Yesterday the boys were into a new rainbow stamp pad I found, and were using stamps on it, and soon moved on to stamping handprints...and eventually footprints (good thing it is washable stamp ink!). I like seeing how they think. Always something fun, creative and interesting!


We have a big 3-day weekend coming up - catch you all on Monday!