Yesterday marked the end of Little Man’s preschool session and the next session doesn’t start up until September 8th. That means eight full days at home with mom and baby sister.  My child has been going to preschool since November and he loves it. The routine: circle time, outdoor time, arts and craft and lunch. Somehow I don’t think mom and baby sister as as fun as PRESCHOOL!  In preparation of Little Man’s short hiatus from school, I bought the book, The Little Hands Art Book, from Amazon.com.  I knew that when I was little I participated in some great art projects and had a ton of fun with them but since I now have 2 children (and one of them is under a year), I am brain dead and really couldn’t clearly recall what they were so I bought a book.  The book arrived yesterday in the mail (perfect timing!) and after flipping through all the pages I was pretty excited.  There were a LOT of art projects from my childhood in there and I couldn’t wait to do some of the more basic ones with Luke. So today, on Day 1 of preschool break, Luke and I made a paper plate spider. The focus of the activity is glue. If the kids are older, they can cut out the shapes (with or without you drawing the shapes on paper first) but Little Man’s scissor skills consist of snipping all the edges to the paper has lots of fringe. He thinks it is great and doesn’t care about my circle that I drew, so I cut the shapes – a big black oval/circle for the spider body, 2 small white circles for eyes, 2 smaller black circles for eyeballs and 8 long rectangle strips of paper to make legs.  Let your little person glue the body on the top of the paper plate (we added a red circle on the bottom of the plate for a red tummy, per Little Man’s request), glue the eyes and eyeballs.  And don’t micromanage – let your little one glue the heck out of everything if he/she wants. My little guy wasn’t quite sure what to do so he was on his way to make a huge puddle and then I showed him how BIG the spider body is and he then circled the glue out to the edges of the plate.  We crinkled the 8 spider legs like an accordion and then I stapled them onto the plate (but in hindsight I could have had him tape the legs or something). Once the spider dried we poked a hole in the plate and Little Man stuck a pipe cleaner through the hole to make a hanging loop. We sang the Itsy Bitsy Spider and used the spider to crawl up and down the water spout. I also taught him that spiders have 8 legs so that is a fun fact that he has been reciting back to me all day.

We also made cookies this evening – he got to hold the hand mixer and blend ingredients. He snagged some chocolate chips out of the bowl as I poured them in and he even got to lick the spoon. As he was licking, he asked “Mommy, what is this?” holding up the spoon. I told him it was a wooden spoon. He said “No, what is THIS stuff?” and he licked. “THAT is cookie dough!”, I told him. “OH! It is? It’s good!” he exclaimed.  I have a feeling from here on out he is going to want to lick every spoon when I am baking.

I say Day 1 was a success and the spider is hanging on the wall in Little Man’s bedroom.  Now I am getting ready for Day #2 and I have PLANS – “Mom and Little Man’s DAY OF FUN!” (Janice from Friends anyone?)