Filling Time With Five Year Olds

I volunteered to watch a friend's son for a few afternoons while she packs her house to move to a new house across town.  He is a good friend of my oldest son and the youngest in his family.  It is really interesting to watch 5 year olds interact and amazing how birth order plays a role in things.  I have had to get creative with them as it is sweltering outside and it is only the beginning of May.  They can only take so much time playing outside in this heat and I am hoping that next week's weather is a little more tolerable.  So far they have built Lego planes, crashed cars, played with our various play musical instruments, watched a movie, played outside and created some very lovely bird feeders.

I knew I had to have a craft just in case it rained.  It needed to be simple, inexpensive and something somewhat useful.  What better craft medium than popsicle (craft) sticks.  At first I thought we would just make picture frames, but then a friend pinned a really cute idea on Pinterest.  A bird feeder seemed simple enough.  I found the tutorial at here.  A few minutes into the project, I realized things were going to go horribly wrong if we didn't split it into two days.  The glue stick is a great idea, but these two little boys couldn't grasp the concept of using more glue.  Weird to me, my problem was always using too much glue.  We switched to the green glitter glue I had on hand today and things worked so much better.  We started early and the boys and I just finished decorating - uh oh, tears!

Crisis averted.  Why is it that when my son falls when I am looking, he laughs, but the minute my eyes aren't on him, because I am looking at the screen and he falls and scrapes his knee, it is the absolute end of the world?  I will never understand the mind of a 5 year old boy!

Back to the crafting.  A wonderful time was had by all.  The boys and I finished decorating a few minutes and here are the finished products.

I think they look fabulous, but now I have to come up with something to top this for next week.  Why do I do this to myself.