Kids Crafts: Paper Animals

Every once in a while, when Ana and I are in the mood for it, we end up doing some arts and crafts together... mostly, the end-product is incidental whereas the process of making it is the main attraction.

Fortunately, Ana, who just turned 2½, manages to catch on and guide her own activities to completion, with gentle nudges from me in the desired direction, after the initial build up. (Like, "let's not suck on the glue Ana, we use it to stick things together", or "we don't eat paper, Ana").

Usually, she works at snail-pace from my adult perspective, but, never mind me, I am an impatient and compulsive fast-worker in general. Ana does just fine on her own.

I love letting her loose on a new craft project and watching from the comfort of a ring-side seat, armed with my camera and a cup of soothing tea.

This is a very simple activity where Ana gets to put together animals from little jumbled pieces of paper I have cut out for her. To keep it simple, I choose different colored papers so she can match the body parts by color if she wants to. But, no harm even if she mixes up the colors - perhaps it is creativity taking a new dimension...

Items used: googly eyes, pom-poms, construction paper, scissors, craft glue

Preparation: cut out head, body, ears, arms and legs out of construction papers - as many as needed, in as many colors as preferred.

At a time, I give no more than 3 sets of cut outs. Sometimes, she is done after the first one as it is too easy and she loses interest before she could get even the first one done.

The first time, I simply told her, "Let's make a teddy bear out of paper" and spread the "art" mat on the floor, with the items handy. I dotted the head and the body strategically with craft glue and gave her the pieces and left her alone to play with the body parts.

She ended up creating a Picasso-esque mutant which I am glad to have captured.

But then, she decided to "fix" it.

I have tried little human-esque stick-figure cut outs with her, but, she seems to enjoy making animals better. Especially if I can manage to make cut outs that sort of resemble farm animals like Pig, Duck etc., and maybe some pets like kitty or doggie... Sometimes, this feels more like a project for me than her as I do the prep work, but, seeing her work with the jumbled cutouts to "create" a whole animal seems worth the effort...