Keepin' 2 Boys Busy

Another snowman craft made my Hasan.  I saw this idea on  Crafts By Amanda .  She also made children out of toilet paper rolls as well.  They looked so cute I had to get Hasan to make one of them.  I love her idea of how to make the earmuffs...very creative!  This was the first time Hasan used the hot glue gun.  Everything dried very quickly.  We didn't paint the toilet paper roll because I wanted to finish this craft in one sitting.

Finally a post for this much neglected blog...I figure I'd better get this one up before winter is over.  I have another snowman craft coming up after this too!

I bought Hasan some oil pastels a while ago and I've been lost on what to get him to do with them.  I'm surprised that I even bought them because oil pastels were my least favorite thing to do in school...they were so messy.  But now I have them so I should use them.  After some googling I came across this idea on ehow.com .

When we started this craft we were supposed to be making these ladybugs  but I didn't exactly remember how they were after we started the project.  So this is what we ended up.  Bilal made the three on the left and Hasan's are on the right.  Bilal loved dipping his brush in different colours and making each one very colourful.  Hasan stuck to one colour for each one.  They both needed some help sticking the pipe cleaner in for the antennas.  After they were all done Bilal loved scratching the googly eyes off and pulling out the pipe cleaners.  Hasan's are still intact and sitting on the TV with his butterfly and octopus .

Bilal's on the left, Hasan's on the right. Before Bilal was born I used to take Hasan to the Ontario Early Years Centre.  We would go to a session called Messy Play which when I first read that title I thought this was not for Hasan.  Hasan hates getting messy...as soon as something gets on his hands he has to clean it...finger painting was never his thing.   But everything wasn't "messy" and he really enjoyed the time he spent there.  Once when we were there they had corrugated cardboard laid out on a table.  The activity was to dip a toy car in paint and run it back and forth on the corrugated cardboard to make tracks.  Since I was having both the boys do this I had them use oil pastels.

I saw this craft a long time ago and thought it would be good to do with Hasan.  It's pretty simple and I've seen it on numerous websites .  The hardest thing for Hasan was waiting for the paint to dry.  We completed it in two days because Bilal woke up early from his nap after Hasan was done painting.

I was very hesitant to put up this post.  It seemed like a very obvious activity to do with kids but sometimes the most obvious things don't always come to mind.  Also this blog is a record of the things my boys do as they grow up...and this is something they love to do.  When Hasan was around 2 years old I had him start to use scissors.  My cousin Sameena told me how her son loved to cut paper with scissors and it was great for developing motor skills.  So I started having Hasan cut up paper into small bits.  I got the scissors pictured above and was really disappointed.  They are made by Melissa and Doug and their products are usually very good quality.  Hasan always had trouble cutting with them.  And now Bilal (pictured above) also has a tough time although he claims that he is doing everything just fine.