Modern Handmade Child

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Points2Ponder By Alan P. Scaglione


“Our First Christmas Craft Corner with the Grandkids
 Points2Ponder
Here’s a challenge to all you grandparents out there…The gauntlet has been thrown down..Let’s see what you can come up with this holiday season!
Nana and Nano had our very first Christmas Crafts Corner(CCC) with our grandchildren Mykai(mick-kye), who is 6, Macie, who is 4, and Jett, who is 2.
We used the glue to put their name on a stocking and then let them use the glitter on the glue and Voila! They were ecstatic with their creation.
The fact that the glitter made its way onto our faces, into our hair and on EVERYTHING was something we did NOT plan for.
Then we taught them how to make reindeer out of clothespins—after Nano spray painted the clothespins brown, to look like reindeer-- of course!
If I hadn’t painted them, the clothespin could never pass themselves off like a “real” reindeer! Oh the things we persuade ourselves to do!
Nana helped glue the crazy eyes on each reindeer; Nano helped with the folding and cutting of the pipe cleaners that we used for antlers.
I let them choose which color they wanted their antlers to be.
Jett pipes up “Yellow-Yellow- YELLOW!”
Yellow it was—who was I fooling? Even the kids knew…these were clothespins, not Rudolph and his Rowdy Reindeer Roundup!
But we did use the end of a Q-tip glued on as the nose…and they each painted the end of the “nose” with a red marker—it could have been Rudolph’s twin!
We put magnets on the back and a Christmas picture of each of them, held by the reindeer’s mouth(remember—it’s a clothespin!) as gifts for their parents!
And then…to finish out the CCC, we decorated 3 dimensional Christmas trees. They had the two wooden pieces you intersect in the middle so it stands on its own--
And looks just like a tree! Again, Nano had pre-painted all of the trees so they were Christmas Green. Each tree had holes in the limbs so…we hung tiny ornaments.
That was after we used glitter paint to make the trees look like they had snow on each limb.
In retrospect—probably should have stopped there—the trees looked traditionally nice.
But NOOO! Nano had to pull out the Penguin and Santa stickers—those trees were never gonna look “traditional” anything ever again!
 Those kids had a field day with those stickers!

The kids were laughing and playing while Nana and Nano helped them with the crafts. We were improvising as we went along…and no one cared.
We were just having fun at our First Annual Christmas Craft Corner!
Special shout out to our daughter Amanda, Mykai and Macie’s mom. It really pays to have a kindergarten teacher in the family—cool heads prevailed!

POINTS2PONDER  Isn’t it amazing when you can see the wheels in their brain moving and suddenly…the figure it out! All on their own!
We were wrapping up our time with the kids.
Nana surprised them with candy canes—they all opened them and started licking the candy canes—red tongues on glitter laced faces—priceless!
Not to be outdone—Nano reaches into his pocket and pulls out dollar bills.
You have to know…my father passed out quarters to his grandkids —that’s just not gonna cut it with the Millennium Ipod/Ipad kids of today!
Nope! Nano was passing out dollars!
I gave Jett a dollar—he put it in his pocket.
I gave Macie a dollar—she put it in her purse...and gave me a big hug!
I gave Mykai a dollar—he paused, looked up at me and said, “You know Nano, you should really give me $6, Macie $4 and Jett $2—to match our age!”
And there it was—my 6 year old grandson had put the two together: forget the candy canes--Nano gives out MONEY!
I chuckled and said something he won’t understand until he’s a teenager…
“Nice Try, Mykai!”

No comments:

Post a Comment