Working on "parjets"

The other day Cole told me he wanted to work on a parjet. It took me several minutes of trying to understand and Cole repeating himself multiple times before I understood what he meant - art project.

When SuperDada and Cole are not watching movies together, SuperDada has the "adventures" with Cole. He takes him out hiking, to story time, they go shopping together, play in the snow in the backyard. SuperDada can't stand to sit inside for too long.

For indoor fun, when Cole isn't playing with his cars, trains, play dough, or Toy Story action figures, Mama is the planner of fun art projects, especially those we can hang on Cole's Art Wall in our dining room. Cole enjoys making and drawing things. He makes things for me at school and he'll often come home with paper he's colored on to cheer me up (his words!). He even made a special mobile for Bevin with his teacher. If that doesn't show his true love for his sister I don't know what does (oh wait, maybe the fact that every time he walks in the door and I'm NOT holding Bevin, the first thing he wants to know is "Where's Bevin?"

My go-to arts and crafts book is The Toddler's Busy Book. It's filled with lots of creative things to do with every day items. My latest discovery in the book was colored glue as a basis for a collage of images torn from a magazine and items that might otherwise be thrown in the trash. I told Cole to find images of food in the magazines I gave him and then tear the pictures out of the magazine. He tore up a few images completely, but that just added to the fun of the collage.

After the tearing ended, I capitalized on Cole's main love when it comes to arts and crafts - the glue stick. The author of The Toddler's Busy Book, Trish Kuffner, recommends that children try all sorts of glue, so I decided now would be a good time for him to try out Elmer's glue at home. I poured some Elmer's glue in a small stainless steel bowl and let Cole pick two colors (from our set of food colors) to mix and make a glue base. We ended up making purple glue! I gave him a wine cork and we set about stamping glue on a piece of newsprint (we have a gigantic pad of it that we also use to paint on). Then we glued the various items and images onto the collage. I definitely helped in this endeavor because I could tell immediately that Cole kept thinking the glue was paint, because it was colored and because we've actually painted with wine corks before. The author actually recommends using a paintbrush, but I thought the wine cork would be less messy. I think next time, I'll try the paintbrush and call it a glue brush and see how it goes. The author recommends letting the child do everything completely on his/her own, but I felt it was important for him to have guidance the first time around, especially since it was his first time using Elmer's Glue at home and making a collage.

Dipping the cork into the glue

Stamping the glue onto the piece of newsprint

The maker of funny faces.

Love this smile