Getting crafty with a two-year-old
The situation: I’m trying to come up with creative things Jasper and I can do together at home. I feel like I’ve been a little too focused on go-go-going all the time (mostly because he developed a habit of asking “Go in yellow car now?” each morning) and not really making sure that Jasper’s cool with just… kicking it at the homestead. I don’t think we need to be crafting ALL the time, but I discovered that the reason (at least, I think it’s the reason) a lot of parents take their small children OUT of the house so often is… it’s kind of complicated trying to figure out what to do with a two-year-old. You have to account for the interests, attention span, and realistic abilities of the child, and you also want to make sure you’re actually engaged in the project, so everyone has FUN!
The solution: a flower press! At first I wasn’t sure a flower press would intrigue Jasper, since as far as I can tell… you just put flowers in it, press them, and then you have a lot of dried flowers to do something with. THEN I realized we could string the dried flowers on thread (or whatever you want to use) and use them to decorate our windows. As I mentioned a while back, we can’t have curtains because Sean’s allergic to dust, but I still have a hankering (oh my god, did I really just use that word?) to prettify our window space. TA-DA: insta-pretty. If you think dried flowers are pretty in the first place.
I went to a local toy store and found a flower press that was perfect — it was blank, so we could paint it ourselves. Jasper loves painting, so engaging him from the very beginning of the project was a bonus. Observe:
We’re lucky because we have a pretty sweet back yard — it’s kind of like a mini-jungle, minus wild animals. Except for the squirrels that like to run on top of the roof at night, totally freaking me out. ANYWAY. We’re growing flowers, and mistakenly paired sunflowers and morning glories (it turns out morning glories steal all the nutrients. Go us!), so we have those half-living, half-dying together in the yard. We picked some flowers from the stalks and began.
Jasper’s favorite part is taking the pressed flowers out — he likes to say “SMASHED FLOWERS!” really loudly and triumphantly sometimes. Other times he says “Aww, flowers” in a sweet voice, so I think it all balances out.
I’m pretty bad at identifying flowers, but these grow around our mailbox:
Every so often Sean finds these teeny paper cranes made from Sunburst wrappers lying on a table in the building in which he works. I love them, so he brings them home for me. They usually just sit around on my computer desk until one of us recycles them, but I was very quickly inspired to string them up with the flowers that we used on our first round:
Right now we’re in the middle of pressing a bunch of roses that Sean bought me a few weeks ago. It seems to be going well!
Jasper also really likes helping put the flower press together — one of his favorite parts is dropping the little screws on so I can tighten it up. In short: flower presses are awesome, and your little kid might think so, too.
The solution: a flower press! At first I wasn’t sure a flower press would intrigue Jasper, since as far as I can tell… you just put flowers in it, press them, and then you have a lot of dried flowers to do something with. THEN I realized we could string the dried flowers on thread (or whatever you want to use) and use them to decorate our windows. As I mentioned a while back, we can’t have curtains because Sean’s allergic to dust, but I still have a hankering (oh my god, did I really just use that word?) to prettify our window space. TA-DA: insta-pretty. If you think dried flowers are pretty in the first place.
I went to a local toy store and found a flower press that was perfect — it was blank, so we could paint it ourselves. Jasper loves painting, so engaging him from the very beginning of the project was a bonus. Observe:
We’re lucky because we have a pretty sweet back yard — it’s kind of like a mini-jungle, minus wild animals. Except for the squirrels that like to run on top of the roof at night, totally freaking me out. ANYWAY. We’re growing flowers, and mistakenly paired sunflowers and morning glories (it turns out morning glories steal all the nutrients. Go us!), so we have those half-living, half-dying together in the yard. We picked some flowers from the stalks and began.
Jasper’s favorite part is taking the pressed flowers out — he likes to say “SMASHED FLOWERS!” really loudly and triumphantly sometimes. Other times he says “Aww, flowers” in a sweet voice, so I think it all balances out.
