Egg Cartons and Pipe Cleaners

Last Friday, Emilie and I made some craft out of an old egg carton. Egg cartons are, I believe, one of the most essential “junk” items in a craft box!! There are so many things you can create from one egg carton if you have a little imagination! Just as well eggs are so yummy (also something you can create many things from and edible things too – even better!)

Although I did most of the imagining with our craft session! Em is a little bit too young to come up with her own creations just yet, but she still had plenty of fun! She LOVES playing with pipe cleaners (another essential in craft boxes!) and she loved playing with our creations once we were finished making.

What we used:
6pack egg carton
Pipe cleaners
Sticky tape
Blue texta
Red texta
Imagination!

What we created:

GOOGLY GLASSES
I cut out the deep round egg cup parts of the carton, 4 in total. Using a cake skewer I poked a hole in the central part of the cup, then cut a medium sized circle in each one. Then I poked two holes on opposite sides of the cup in each. We threaded a pipe cleaner through one of each hole and made the arms of the glasses. Then I connected two cups together with a pipe cleaner through the remaining holes:

Emilie had fun putting on and taking off her googly glasses and enjoyed looking at herself in front of the mirror!


What do I think this activity provoked in Emilie’s development?


- Even though she is too little to use scissors, she was watching intently as I cut out the egg carton components. I made sure to tell her very seriously that scissors were very sharp and make an ouchie if you touch them.

- Threading the pipe cleaner through the little holes refines her dexterity skills and her understanding of making something go through a hole to the other side.


- Putting on and taking of the glasses helps train her awareness of her own body, in particular her face and eyes. She can see that my googly glasses cover my eyes and make my face look different, and her googly glasses cover her eyes, and makes what she sees around her different!

FINGER PUPPETS
Using the triangular pointy parts of the egg carton (the parts that separate the eggs), I taped pipe cleaners to the top point (I cut the pipe cleaners into shorter sections). This was the finger puppets’ hair. We had a blonde puppet and a red-head puppet! Then all that was left to do was to draw two blue eyes and a red lipstick mouth onto each puppet. Emilie had HEAPS of fun with the little people. She made them kiss each other, she kissed them and made me and Paul kiss them too LOL:

When we were done she played with a few other pipe cleaner people that we had made on another day. Here she is making them kiss each other!

What do I think this activity provokes in Emilie’s development?

- Emilie is starting to enjoy games that involve role play. Once she could recognise the puppets as “little people” she was free to explore a role play in what she believes people can do and what people like to do. The fact that she was making the puppets kiss indicates to me that she is in touch with her emotional side, in particular love (hence the kissing LOL).

- This also refines her dexterity skills, learning how to use certain digits for different things, making a fist with two fingers raised, inserting her fingers into the puppets etc.

PHOTO POST June 2011

Soaking up the sunshine!

At a local play centre

Madison and her friend eating fruit salad sticks

Vegin' with her teddies

Make-shift car / perfect tv watching lounge

Vroom, vroom! Playing with the truck uncle Russ gave her

She was too excited to sit still for a photo... she's a care bear...

Helping daddy in the garden

Madison 10 years

My step daughter, Madison, is 10 years old, she will turn 11 in September. She is in grade 5 this year. I’ve known her since she was 2, been with her dad since she was 5 and her step-mum since she was 9. Normally we are really close, but she is a troubled kid. She has experienced a few traumatising events in recent years, and she is behind in her education.

Before she started year one, she used to play “schools” with me, where we would sit and learn the basics of literacy and numeracy. She used to love learning, she has always been a very active girl, she loves dancing and wins all of her running races at school. The sad thing is that she doesn’t like herself, she thinks she is ugly (she is so beautiful). She still laughs and plays and there are many moments that she enjoys, but her overall attitude is that everything is boring and she prefers to close herself off from the world with her earphones in.

Even though Madison has noticeable strengths, she doesn’t seem to immerse herself in them. For example, she is very musical, she was chosen from her year group to learn the clarinet, however she doesn’t enjoy practising or applying what she has learnt from her music lessons to her life in the form of enjoyment.

In another example, she excels in sport at school, she is a fast runner and always does well in races. However she doesn’t play any sport. She doesn’t want to.

It’s difficult for me to understand why she doesn’t want to enjoy the things she is good at, because I know that my most enjoyable subjects/activities when I was at school were the things that I was good at. What I have put it down to is low self-esteem, low self-worth, self-hatred and low confidence levels.

Madison stays with Paul and me for one week when Paul is offsite, and for a weekend (2 nights) while he is away. The weekend just gone was a long weekend and I had Madison for 3 nights.

My mum has given me some home-schooling material which I have sat down with Madison’s mum this afternoon and showed her. I suggested that Madison be temporarily home-schooled so she has the chance to get her self-confidence back and get back on track academically. (Madison’s literacy and numeracy are very poor and she is very behind in her school work).

Madison’s mum seemed to take it in and she thought of it as a good idea. So when Paul gets back from site, we will have a family meeting, the four of us and discuss what the best option is for Madison.

Here are some photos of the girls from the weekend:

 This is Madison making a painting for her school teacher to say "sorry" -There was an altercation at school last week :-/

This is Emilie playing with the left overs after cutting out Madison's flowers!!!