By Millie
This project started in a moment of chaos. I’d finally sat down to play Legos with one child while holding the baby and trying to keep another child from undoing everything the first one was building, and then my little girl wanted to do a project. I was a overwhelmed and maybe responded with an annoyed tone. But I could see she had been waiting too. She had the idea that she wanted to make puppets, so I tried to regroup, take a deep breath, and think of a way to do make it all happen. The first ideas that came into my head were too complicated and I would need to be too involved, which wasn’t really possible in the moment. She loves coloring, cutting and gluing. So we decided to make little paper people to go on the top of some craft sticks we had around. I tried to tell her to just cut out a head, then a body, color it and glue it on. She didn’t go for it and still appeared a little confused. Finally, I thought to cut out a small pile of paper people that she could color and glue on for herself. It seemed we could all be happy. She got to work on her puppets, and I could color and glue a bit here and there, while still finding the next Lego piece for her brother and keeping B busy with a few Legos of her own.
The real magic was the next morning. On their own, the kids had finished the puppets that hadn’t been put together from the day before and wanted to make more. They really liked making them look like themselves and their friends. That’s when I decided to step back even further and trace the people for them to cut out themselves.
The supplies are simple and can be altered to fit what you have laying around. There are also a million ways to make them a little more detailed or use more exciting materials. But for now they are simple and my kids loved making them and playing with them. Even little B loved them….or at least she loved tearing the people off of the sticks. Hey, everyone’s creative process is a little different, right?
