Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Arts and crafts

The latest example of the difference between girls and boys, or at least between Sydney and AJ, became evident Sunday night as the kids worked on art projects at the dining room table. I just wanted them to start calming down in preparation for bedtime, but soon their creative juices were flowing.


Sydney wanted to make a card for Keegan. I've never met Keegan, nor do I recall Sydney ever mentioning his name. I'm assuming he's a daycare friend, but really have no idea how he rose to the top of her special list so quickly.


What I do know is that suddenly all she wanted to do was glue a whole bunch of punched out shapes onto a card. She was a little concerned that most of my stamping punches are flower shaped because "boys don't like flowers." At the same time, she was impatient, and so decided it wasn't worth the wait for me to punch out some fish, frogs and stars, which are about the most boyish shapes as I can provide.

I don't know if it's a coincidence, but she did an amazingly good job of gluing the various pieces into the shape of a heart. As she worked, I heard her say repeatedly, "Keegan will love this!"

I'm going to have to do some investigating and figure out just who this Keegan kid is.

AJ, meanwhile, wanted to color pirates. But the way he colors, the black outlines in his Treasure Island activity book are mere suggestions of what the finished page should look like.


It should be noted that AJ didn't want the above photo taken. "It's not ready yet," he protested. "It's gonna take me an hour to be done."

Among the finishing touches, he asked me to help him spell out a pirate threat, "Get them!" He also colored in some musical notes across the top of the page. One of the pirate's swords is now outlined in red. "That's blood," was the explanation. Lovely.

Alas, bedtime arrived before his masterpiece was complete. I'm beginning to understand what AJ's teacher explained to us at conferences. AJ takes longer than many of his classmates to get his work done, primarily because he's so detail oriented.

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