Five year old cousins and every day besties, Tyler and Channing, demanded their day at grandma camp this week. Sometimes it’s a scramble to think of effective ways to keep boys of this age engaged in sit-down-and-concentrate activities. This pair prefers to free lance instructions. Example: The red yarn I supplied for decorative use quickly morphed into a mission to trail a length of it around and about the house: upstairs, downstairs, inside and out. Curious cats, enticed from hiding, put an abrupt end to that quest, but I had to admire the creativity of cousin teamwork for as long as it lasted!
Now for the project!….
My artsy sense that every stray bottle cap, spool, and pill bottle has crafting potential yielded thrifty raw material for several satisfying summer successes. This one’s a tic tac toe game, super-starring bugs we carefully studied first, just to get a hang of how they “hang on” with six legs, not eight! We looked at wing sets, too, and the complexity of those big “buggy” eyes. And then we were ready to buzz on over to begin!….
Prep work first, though!
I don’t mind trusting a seven year old with a spray can, especially while I hover at his elbow as he works. But a five year old? With a mischievous sparkle in his eye? Nah! I sprayed bug tokens in advance, five each of red and yellow for each crafter - then hid the cans!
After that, I sorted a color coded selection of feathers, pipe cleaners, wiggle eyes, paper scraps, pom poms, scissors, and glue….
And then we got to work!….
Some feather fluff atop the head, foam sticker wings, and pipe cleaner appendages are Tyler’s wise choices.
Dripping with glue, these little guys acquire their means of vision thanks to Channing’s artsy diligence.
Once the last pom pom was plopped atop, these brave little soldiers were ready for battle on a grandma-made playing board. The best fun didn’t occur here, though! Nope. Those moments arrived back home when both boys, puffing with pride, challenged mom, dad, and siblings to fiercely competitive games with red and yellow tokens that “may or may not” resemble bugs, but satisfied the souls of those who dug deeply into a box of throw away scrap and emerged winners!
Intrigued by the thrifty fun you can enjoy with a pile of junk, a spray paint can, and a stream of glue that never quits? Here’s Austin, age seven, proudly displaying the nifty* robot he constructed from reclaimed goodies when it was his turn at Grandma Camp.
* “nifty” 🤣 a word that’s sooo “grandma vocab” it draws curious expressions around the table every time it’s heard! “Groovy,” too! Now there’s an even better one!
