Monday, February 07, 2011

Kiddie Kraft FAIL

Last week, I was perusing the latest issue of Family Fun magazine, which naturally is chock-full of Valentine's Day crafts.  We're going to see half of Caitlyn's cousins on Saturday, so I thought it would be fun for her to make some valentines for them.  My eye landed on these adorable yarn hearts.  Three ingredients - cornstarch, water, yarn.  What could be simpler?

So yesterday I picked up some yarn and heart-shaped cookie cutters at the grocery store.  Today, we got the stuff out to start.  We had to run a quick errand, so before we left, I mixed up the glue.  We were gone for 20 minutes, and by the time we got home, the glue was a solid, gelatinous mess.  So I stirred in the hot water, as they instructed.  Seems to me, based on my knowledge of cornstarch, that it should have smoothed right out.  Instead, we ended up with a clumpy, watery mess.  But I decided to forge ahead and make the best of it.

Went to get the yarn.  No yarn.  Where the heck is the yarn? I  know I bought it, I remember her scanning the coupon...it has to be around here somewhere!  I still have no idea where it is, so I went and got some different yarn from my stash.  No problem.


Sat my daughter down, put her smock on, and showed her how to dip the yarn, squishing it around to get the glue all over it, then how to scrape it off (since, remember, we have a gloppy clumpy lumpy mess instead of nice smooth glue).  I helped her put the first piece in the cookie cutter and stood back to watch her do the second one.


If there's one thing I've learned about my daughter through our crafting, it's that she has little regard for process.  Maybe that's a two-year-old thing, I don't know.  But she has no interest in following steps and instead is eager to just do her own thing.  Sometimes that works great.  For this project, not so much!  She dipped just the very tip of the yarn in the glue, and then put it in the cutter.  So I showed her again.  And then she asked to watch WonderPets. 


Since she obviously had no interest in this particular project, I cleaned up her hands and let her go watch WonderPets.  Since we had one partly done, I went ahead and finished it. 



At least she'll have a Valentine decoration to hang up in her room, right?  And tomorrow, we'll paint...