Story Time

I had the idea tonight to do something crafty with Rachel tonight. I had hoped to do something more Christmas-y, but couldn't find any Christmas-y magazines, so I had to settle for a Newsweek and two old Consumer Reports. For the first story, we cut out and named some people (most of whom she didn't use) and then tried to find photos to match the story she was creating, with limited success. For the subsequent stories, I cut out a lot of photos ahead of time and let her use the photos to help determine the course of the story. She had a lot of fun with the glue stick (it goes on purple so you can see where you've applied glue) and I at times I had to encourage her to think more about the story.

I asked leading questions like

• What is their favorite color?
• What do they like?
• What don't they like?
• What's happening here?
• What happened next?

to get her to think. Since there was nothing but a blank sheet and some pictures, it forced her to really think. I think she had fun. Click any photo to enlarge. The bad handwriting is all mine.

Construction Paper O' Lantern

PARENTHACKS.COM -- Clever - for children too small to paint or carve pumpkins, cut out eyes, mouths and noses (perhaps even more than one of each for mix-and-match creativity - or lots and throw a party) and the kids simply glue them to the pumpkin. More...

Scapping the Scrapping

PARENTHACKS.COM -- Interesting idea... taking photos of kids working on art projects. Then the photos can be part of the project, or part of the present, or part of the scrapbook later on. I know Lori did this last Christmas when Rachel made Christmas tree ornaments for the grandmas. More...