Time to say thank you

You picked my clothes up off the floor.
You brought me water, then juice, then milk.
I spilt the milk and you mopped it up.

You cooked, and cooked - meals, puddings, and more meals.
Lemon meringue pie, rice pudding, apple crumble, strawberry mousse.
I expected them.

You helped me, time and again, to say thank you.
Still, I forgot, I forget.

You loved me through my tears, my screams.
My foot-stamps, pushes, door-slams, biting - was I a biter?
I wound you up, up, up, and you wound me down.
You screamed 'one day you'll understand!'

I understand.

Thank you!

Work in Progress: Whose Shoes?

When Feets was about 18 months old, she couldn't bear to get her fingers dirty. After a colleague commented that Feets surely must love painting, as a daughter of mine, I realised that something had to be done about this issue. Similarly, she was on the brink of starting to recognise colours.

I decided I needed to come up with a painting activity that I was myself invested in, that I could invite Feets to help me with - no more half-heartedly showing Feets what she could do with the paint while keeping my own hands as clean as possible; I would start painting and Feets could help me if she wanted to.

She also loved shoes at the time - indeed, 'shoes' was her first word. So I drew pictures of all the shoes in our house onto cereal packets and painted them with Feets ... with plans to make a book of colours and rhyming words alongside, loosely inspired by The Foot Book by Dr Seuss, which we loved.

Well, we didn't finish that project. I couldn't keep up with the speed of her learning, and she knew her colours long before I was ready.

      
But, roll on three years, and I found myself in exactly the same spot with Bean - after a messy play session at a gallery where I couldn't convince her to do anything, I decided to open the half-finished folder of painted shoes, draw a few new ones, and invite Bean to help with them.

Well, time is fast running out once again, but fingers crossed, the book will be finished before it's too late! I've created characters for Feets, Bean, myself and Mr Liam, and they will scramble over the shoes throughout the story. Watch this space!

Legacy of the Arty Party

What I didn't really expect when organising an Arty Party for 25 children, was to have materials left over. For the sake of efficiency, I expected to throw everything away, but in the end, we managed to salvage a lot of stuff, and in many ways, having the time to enjoy such a lavish set of materials has been the best part of all ... ... which led to a magical monster-making session with some family friends, and ages ranging from 2 - 13. And, because I forget just how long home-made playdough lasts, Bean had a glorious time with the playdough and the pasta a few weeks later - first cutting the playdough with a knife (one favourite activity)... ... and then breaking down the pasta with a pestle and mortar. By now, the playdough has merged into one big ball, but it's not yet mucky and it looks absolutely beautiful!

I will share today's magic with the paintsticks' paper next time...

An Arty Party

I don't lead or deliver many activities at the moment. So when I finally decided that the best plan was to devise and carry out Feets' fifth birthday party myself, it turned out to be a fun and creative adventure - and wonderful at last to develop a workshop for the most important children in the world - my own! I made eight batches of playdough and got carried away with experimentation, mixing some coloured with rice for texture (didn't work so well - the colour is prone to run and the rice goes a bit soft with the moisture of the playdough) and others with glitter when the colouring wasn't so bright. I also dyed masses of pasta for children to embellish their models with, along with googly eyes and pipe cleaners. To try and prevent one child from massing all the playdough together, Feets invited each child to choose a ball of playdough as they arrived. This was a nice welcome, but actually it limited their imagination to playing only with the colour they'd been given. Otherwise, playdough was a great success!  I gatherred loads of wisdom from other blogging parents and will share this in a future post.

Along one wall, we laid down a strip of lining paper and laid out paintsticks. I wasn't sure whether to set children in a certain direction with a given theme, but time dictated that and we left them to it. I love paintsticks! They are so bold and bright, and mess free, and again, the kids had a blast, filling two long strips with scrawls and patterns.

Finally, the age old favourite scratch masks - except this time I explored scratch glasses to avoid the need for adults helping with elastic.  Definitely better for this age group.

A load of dancing, stuck-in-the-mud, bubbles and Simon Says outside, and a few parachute games to finish off, and we were done. I ached for at least three days afterwards, but I was pretty happy and for the first time look forward positively to future birthdays! (Not sure Mr Liam would say the same ...)