I have been doing a bit more crafts with my kids now since the drawing aspect is taken care of by the Art School that Snow White is attending. So I am looking out for some inexpensive crafts that I can conduct with Snow White. Sometimes, when we run out of ideas, it will be good to make a trip to the bookshop. That was what I did and saw crepe paper that cost me a dollar.
Cutting and Rolling
I decided to ask Snow White to draw a huge shape on the paper. She drew a heart and said that she wanted to give it to her teacher. Next, I cut out small strips of crepe paper, about 0.5cm in width and asked her to roll into tiny balls, make sure she squeezed it tight. Thought it was rather simple, but can be difficult for a 4 year old kid. Indeed, I started off by giving her a strip of paper that was 1.5cm in width and 15cm in length . It was not successful , she could not roll and squeeze to tighten the crepe paper into a ball. When she pasted the crepe paper onto the heart shape, the crepe paper 'dangled' out. It was awful looking and so I plucked them out and decided on trying the 0.5cm width and 15cm length strip of crepe paper. This measurement was so much better. Be prepared to spend time beside your child to roll and paste. Snow White was quite tired, I let her take a break.
Another tendency is that Snow White would paste anywhere that she like within the heart shape. I thought this was OK till much later, I discovered that there were many gaps in the shape. Some gaps were big and others were small. I had to ask her to patch up and was not easy. You have to frequently hold up the picture to check that the gaps were covered up, then placed down and checked again. A better way is tell your child to start pasting the balls from the outside , then move towards the centre of the heart or vice versa. In such a manner, work will turn out to be tidier.
This activity looked pretty easy, just need some planning. I also enagaged my second child, Cinderella, to do it too. She's two and a half years old and would just roll without squeezing the paper into a ball. She had fun though she did not complete hers and there were many more gaps in her picture.
