On the face of it this week’s craft looked very simple.

Turn a cardboard ring like this (from a roll of gaffer tape or a ball of knitting wool):

Into a bracelet like this by gluing on sweet wrappers:

Unfortunately it turned into a very frustrating activity for my 3 year old who did not like having to wait for the glue to dry. I had many complaints of ‘They keep moving around’ and ‘The glue isn’t sticking’, which wasn’t really helped when he decided that the way to improve it was to put more glue over the top of the sweet wrappers like we do with paper mache.

The end result is still very nice, but I think in his head he wanted a smoother finish.

 It was a very frustrating morning for the poor lad as he then went to build a duplo tower which got knocked  over by someone else, then another child pulled all the bricks away and as he was getting those back some other child banged into the tower he had just started to rebuild (this last one was on purpose I’m sure). Much crying, shouting  and brick snatching then followed (from my son) and we soon left. It took him half an hour to stop sobbing . It would be nice for him to be able to build a tower in peace at toddlers.

I know it’s all part of learning social skills but as I was the only parent that reacted to the mini event I think my son was probably the only one that learnt anything. He was supposed to learn that he shouldn’t make such a fuss and just wait until the younger ones have got bored with destroying his game. I think he probably just learnt that life’s unfair.

Hmm, patience and control, all this perceived unfairness will be worth it in the end, isn’t that why I’m stricter on my children than anyone else seems to be?

Here is a picture of a tall flower and a small child. what a seamless link.

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