Hot Air Balloon and Easter Inspired Hat.

Last week had been crazy! There was plentiful of work that needed to be completed and I was also going mad in the kitchen. As a result, I wasn’t able to devote much time to Little A. Though we went for walks in the building, took a stroll in the park, drove late night to fetch a chilled juice, we never sat down to do any activity. Moreover, the guilt of not keeping up to the promise of doing an activity a day to keep him entertained haunted evey night. It’s not that he was bored whole day but getting down to complete a project together gives a totally different feeling – for both of us. 2 is looking a good age to me – besides those tantrums, I can see that he now makes his own choices, helps me tid bit with house work,  learned to keep his toys back in place, shows affection for his parents, friends and also for tiny little soft toys he had been associated with since birth, has been potty trained, having proper conversations with me, remembering short stories from his books and is also eating on his own except for rice.

So coming back to a day before when Caroline of Becoming Stay At Home Mum pinged me on Twitter for submitting an entry for her weekly Creative Challenge linky, I was skeptical this time. I had no entry that would fit the criteria, but until today! Currently, Little A is very fascinated by “hot air balloons”. Everytime he come across a photograph or watch on the television, his excitement reaches another level. Since he is so fond of it, I thought of doing a  model of hot air balloon at home and involve him in the process. Another project we did was making a hat from the card paper. This was an instant thought today morning, so we used materials readily available at home. Little A is getting conscious of camera these days which is why there aren’t any photos I could click while we continued with our activities. I tried to click one while he was busy coloring a sheet of paper, but as soon as he saw me he stopped and it then took 15 mins to bring him back to where he left.See I told you he is making his own choices!

We first did hot air ballon which was very simple, easy and quick. We were invited for a birthday party yesterday, so Little A picked up a helium balloon and brought it home – I am so glad he did! Helium balloon is actually the main material in the whole craft of making a hot air ballon. I asked Little  A to make two holes in a thermocol glass with the help of a pencil which he did perfectly following my directions and actions. I tied one white string in each hole and secured it tightly. Little A held the balloon while I taped the other ends of the string on the balloon. That’s it! Our hot air balloon was ready. This was the most simplest version we created with less items available at home. One can go ahead and decorate it fancy. Put stickers, color the glass or add any other details, the choice is yours. We let one of his small toys sit inside and made it take a ride in the air. He played with that for quite a long of time even when I was not around. I never knew such a simple craft would bring so much excitement in him . We are definitely going to try this in an open space soon.

Hot air balloon was done within few minutes! There was still a lot of time for lunch so we decided to do another DIY activity. I gathered card paper, crayons, colored papers, glue and stationery. In the drawer I spotted some Easter stickers lying. Since Easter is on Sunday, I thought it will be great to add them on our hat and make it inspired by the occasion. First I cut out a rectangular piece on the card paper and measured on Little A’s head. I had to cut a small extra strip so that the hat fitted onto his head perfectly. In the meanwhile, Little A started coloring one of the already colored papers with a crayon. After he finished, I filled in the blank spaces with the same crayon that he used. I cut out the thin strips of the triangles from the same colored paper and then Little A helped me in sticking it in the inside of the long rectangular piece of the card paper that was cut before. I asked him to color the card paper with another crayon which he happily did. While he did that, I stuck the 2 ends of the rectangle to give it a shape of an hat. Blank spaces was filled again and I then cut the colored card paper into long rectangles. Little A stuck them vertically with a glue on the places I pointed to him on the hat. It still looked very incomplete, so I traced out the stars (from Little A’s sorting toy) on the paper and asked him to stick them on the vertical pieces of the colored card paper. We then jointly put some Easter stickers and our hat was ready to be worn.

There was not much for him to do except for coloring and sticking which was also done in my supervision but I was very happy to see his involvement in both the craft projects.