Art & Craft time

Since staying at home, I have been feeling guilty for not actively engaging Caleb in meaningful activities not because I do not want to, but because I lack the creativity to think of what to do with him.

So the numerous times that he has touched the water in the fish tank, used his drumstick to hit the TV set, drag chairs or laundry baskets around creating loud noises etc etc...I feel I have to take some responsibilities for all that because he is simple bored.

So these few days, I do try to do some art and craft with him. Its tough because I end up playing with it most of the time and he would just be messing it up and you can guess who would be the one cleaning the mess. SIGH! Well, but at least, he doesnt do silly things as a protest of boredom.

Here are some activities which I have done with him so far.

1) Chalktime


When I was a student, I have always loved chalk. I remembered how my classmates would all go up to the board to write on it while waiting for the next teacher to come into class. I loved writing on the chalkboard with it and I remember how I could actually draw a perfect circle with the chalk. It brought back so many wonderful memories when I was playing this with Caleb. How I wish schools still use chalkboard as its so much more 'artistic' to write on it. I can imagine the mathematical symbols, graphs and differential equations all being written on the board. That would be an art piece by itself. Yea, guess I have been watching too many Mathematical movies or TV series like Numbers. Oh well.

2)Punch time

When I was in JC, there was this craze on the art and craft punchers. And I bought quite a number of it with the goal of making my own cards with those punchers. Result: didnt even make a single one. I dont even remember what I did with it. Ha. Anyway, glad Caleb can use it now.



The only part messy was the glue. Other than that, it was ok.


I also brought out my markers to decorate it, if not it would be very plain



Also took out a stencil which I found in the art drawer and thought Caleb could use it to trace the alphabets. But he has yet to control his pen. So he doesnt know how to use it yet.



End result of this activity:


3)Stamping Fun

As a student, I collected so many stamps in the past. I loved stamping things. I remember how I used to visit my father's office, sat on his secretary's chair and start using the stamps on her table. So here's my 'almost white elephant' collection which I finally get to use once again!




I also had this set of Crayola mini stamper markers. So I decided to take it out. But Caleb didnt know how to stamp with this as to him, it looks like a marker. So he used it to draw instead of stamping with it.


As you can see, I was doing most of the work as those stamps on the paper were done by me, while the doodling part was done by him.

Finally, I decided to let him just play with the markers as he still doesnt know how to stamp properly. I am quite surprised how these set of markers still have ink as it has probably been decades since I had them.

Caleb's first drawing he did on the paper that day was this..



And did you know what he said to me? He said, "Rainbow, rainbow". And this was one day after he saw the rainbow for the first time at my parent's place. I was taken aback as it does look like a rainbow and he even arched the lines.

So the whole time, he was drawing rainbows and circles. Thats about what he can do so far.





Check out the lines on his arm. He got that from taking the marker cap off.

Then another drawing he surprised me was this! Can you guess what this is?? (You have to exercise your imagination here)



He told me, its a "Star!". Did you guess correctly?

After a while, we ended up drawing on the newspaper instead, which was placed there actually to protect the table. But it was more fun drawing on the newspaper as it felt like you can express your drawings more freely.



Well, that was what Caleb probably thought as he started going to every part of the newspaper to draw, including 'destroying' my drawings.



Its how apt when as I was taking pictures of Caleb, I noticed that we have been drawing on a newspaper with this heading "Education: The future is here". So funny.



Well, I think Caleb did enjoy all these activities as he just wouldnt stop. Glad I was finally educating and engaging him , rather than letting him do aimless and silly things. The future IS here..