Crafternoons with Poppy: Snowmen

Introducing the men of the hour:

Left: Snowman sun catcher, right: paper plate snowman

I love doing crafts with Poppy. There is a big picture of a rainbow above her bed, dated 13 November 2010, and it's not the best looking thing but I keep it up there to remind myself how far we've come in terms of crafting.

A year ago I was naive enough to think that 2 year olds could colour within a given space. I got frustrated when she wouldn't put the colours of the rainbow where they belonged. I ended up colouring most of the rainbow (which would explain the bad quality of work). Then, I only had about 10 minutes to capture her attention before she'd run off to wash her hands or get distracted with toys. But a whole year has passed and my, have we grown, in terms of crafts! These days she's happy to sit with me for about half an hour (though there are times when she'd decide that bleah, enough was enough and abandon me to finish up), and I know that when I forget a certain material and ask her to stay and wait and not touch anything while I'm gone for those 2 seconds, I can trust her to follow my instructions.

In line with the whole Singaporean belief that the Christmas season begins in late October, I have been singing Christmas carols to Poppy. Her favourite is Frosty the Snowman (I love hearing her sing "Thumpety thump thump, look at Frosty go"), and we sing that every night.

SUNCATCHER SNOWMAN


Materials
- Paints
- Thick plastic sheet (we used OHP plastic)
- Markers

How to make it:
Step 1: Parent to draw out shape of snowman
Step 2: Paint in desired colours, set aside to dry (during this time, we worked on the other snowman)
Step 3: When dried, flip over plastic sheet and draw in eyes and buttons

Optional: Cut out snowman and punch a hole on top. You can hang it near your window anytime from now till Christmas (hopefully we'll get around to doing it before Christmas 2012)



PAPER PLATE SNOWMAN

Materials
- 1 big paper plate, 1 small paper plate
- Scraps of paper, felt or foam (we used all 3)
- Googly eyes
- Pipe cleaner
- Buttons


How to make it:
Step 1: Attach the 2 plates together, forming the head and body of the snowman
Step 2: Cut out 1 rectangle and 1 square from materials (for us it was foam) to form the hat, and glue on top of head (snowman's, not your own)
Step 3: Paste googly eyes and red triangle for nose (we used paper)
Step 4: Stick pipe cleaners on back of big plate for arms, and paste mittens on (we used felt)
Step 5: Glue on buttons for... buttons

Enjoy!