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| My Christmas flag |
I mention in my profile that some of the art and craft projects that I do with my eldest daughter don't go well and this is one of those. It bombed big time!!
Cakey and I had a wonderful time making pretty pink market stall flags a little while ago so I thought she would enjoy making some Christmas flag decorations... I was completely wrong. I spent a fair bit of money buying Christmas fabric, ribbon, gold braid and jingle bells. I then spent a couple of evenings cutting up the fabric and tying the jingle bells onto gold string. Cakey spent a total of 5 minutes making one Christmas flag. Arghhhhh
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| Cakey's Christmas flag |
With a little hindsight I think this is what went wrong...
- Much to my distress I think the biggest problem was that there was no pink and purple involved. Cakey is really rebelling against the traditional Christmas colours - she refuses to accept that Christmas colours are mainly red and green and tells me repeatedly that HER Christmas colours are pink and purple. This is annoying and I hope the pink and purple phase (at the exclusion of all other colours) ends soon.
- I interrupted an episode of Diego to do this activity. What was I thinking?
- When she was in the mood to do this activity I wasn't ready and when I was ready she wasn't in the mood.
- I really wanted this activity to go well as I had spent time and money. I don't know why but these highly planned and prepared activities are often failures.
- When she showed little interest in making the flags I pushed rather than just packing it away and trying again another day.
For more Christmas craft ideas check out my Christmas Pinterest Board.
If this is your first visit to At home with Ali – welcome. If you like it, you can follow along via email, RSS or facebook. You can also find me on Pinterest and Instagram. Cheers Ali
I know this feeling, my son whos 4 favourite colour is black, i have told him he is a bit young to be a goth, but he insist on black a lot. I find when i have spent money, and we don't have lots that it ups the pressure in activities. Also when i don't have a lot of one on one time to give him i really want things to go well...sometimes it works sometimes it really really wont work. :) its a wonderful idea
ReplyDeleteThanks Sassy, it made me smile to think of your 4 yo as a little goth.
ReplyDeleteIt's frustrating when you actually spend money on certain supplies and it doesn't go as planned. My girls almost always want to use the "wrong" colors. I think I've just gotten used to the fact that my vision is always different than theirs. Lately I've just started to make my own of whatever we're doing to make myself feel better;-)
ReplyDeleteThat's great you get stuck in yourself Brooke, you have such fabulous ideas. Sometimes when I actually do my own version of whatever activity we are doing it really encourages Cakey.
ReplyDeleteI make some of those same "mistakes"! It can be very frustrating! Great post!
ReplyDeleteFor two years in a row my daughter has asked for a pink tree so I understand the color disconnect. :) I do find that adding sparkle sometimes helps the color issue. I also have to remind myself if I want a project to turn out a specific way I need to do one myself too.
ReplyDeleteHa! I've made all these mistakes so many times!!! Glad to hear I'm not the only one!!
ReplyDeleteWe've known for a long time that children learn best when the ideas come from them, hence Cakey's initial interests in the flag project. Recent early childhood education theory has picked up on this and bases it's curriculum on children's interests. The trick teachers use is to have conversations with children to explore where this interest could go to and then take the project along those lines - could end up being nothing to do with flags - could be festivals, road works or something unimaginable. Children's minds are a wonder. Try doing a mind map or spiders web of where your imagination could take you if it was your project, you'll be surprised.
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