Holly
Before I had children I always had rather romanticised views of doing lots of terribly creative things with them when the weather wasn’t so good for walks or playing outside. I imagined a world where I’d be cutting out shapes in potatoes for them to paint with or using old loo rolls to make robots. Somehow in my vision I never imagined a baby who would rather glue her hands together than glue something to the page and a toddler who would rather colour in herself than a colouring book. So like many of my preconceived ideas about motherhood it hasn’t gone quite according to plan. But never one to give up on my dreams I have persevered and now that Eliza is 3 years old we are starting to have some fun with making things.
So last weekend, when the weather was miserable and the baby was having a nap Eliza and I set about making wooden spoon people. As you do.
It’s dead easy which is a prerequisite for me and all you need are a couple of wooden spoons which you no longer use (they have a lifespan of a few years I find, before you find splinters in your porridge), or you can buy new ones from a budget store like Lidl or Aldi. If you use old ones though it’s best to coat them in pva glue first just to prevent little fingers getting splinters.
So here goes, the most un-crafty Mummy in the known universe makes wooden spoon faces.
First we wrapped the ‘body’ in crepe paper and glued it all down.
Then we added some face features that I cut out for her (even I know that scissors and a 3 year old is not a great combination.) Although I have to say Eliza was far more interested in the glue and it was me who got rather into the type of noses my, I mean, her people would have.
She was very proud of her wooden spoon people and named them Mummy and Daddy. That’s me with the purple hair. Of course. Daddy had aged rather dramatically and had a sort of white afro.
I was pleasantly surprised how much patience she had and she loved sticking on the hair in particular. She has since been making them ‘talk’ to each other rather a lot and they have very interesting voices. I notice with some shame that the ‘Mummy’ spoon seems to shout at the Daddy spoon rather a lot though…
So I have now proved to myself that I, too, can be a creative Mummy like all these wonderful parent bloggers I read who are always doing lovely things with their kids. Needless to say though after our brief flirtation with creativity we went and put Peppa Pig on the telly. Well I can’t change too quickly can I?
What a cute idea! I’m still not to the point where I can sit down and do a craft with my two. But over the last few months they have proved to be very good at stirring and dumping ingredients into a bowl. Needless to say we have been making way too many biscuits and sweets 🙂
We had more success with this by strapping the littlest one into a highchair and putting him in charge of smearing everything with glue with the help of a paintbrush. Or maybe try it while the little one is asleep!