Now that the monkey’s a bit older, she tends to take over and tweak her own ideas for projects.  It’s been a while since I set something up with a fairly specific goal in mind, but since first grade (with all its new rules) is about to start and we’ve been working on following instructions (WITHOUT complaining), I decided to set up a project using pretty much things I had around the house.

So I decided we’d make some monster masks.

When she came home from summer daycare, I had it all laid out on the kitchen table, ready to go:  glue, sparkles, google eyes, puffballs, foam, washable paints, scissors, tape, construction paper, some scraps of fur from my monster dolls, and a couple of cardboard boxes from the recycle bin.  The key here is to set it up so that it’s stress-free, and you’re not worrying about paint splashing onto nice things, so I laid out a tablecloth, and put a messy shirt for her to change into.  A little prep work, and making messes isn’t so bad.

She was excited right away, and started making her own ideas up, which is usually okay, but as I said, we’re working on following directions–so I asked her if she could start by painting the boxes, and THEN we could decorate them.  I tried to work a little ahead of her, so she could see what I was going for.  (In hindsight, it might’ve helped for her to see a final version to shoot for, but ain’t nobody got time f’that.  That would’ve meant either that I’d be doing a kid project twice, or that she’d be doing it on her own while looking at my final piece, and for me, the purpose is to do it TOGETHER.)

So we painted and decorated… and since she’s pretty fast, BOOM–she was finished with her monster “mask” in no time!  I love that she made a little unicorn horn.  The funny thing is that I had THOUGHT I’d make a horn, but didn’t get a chance before she beat me to it…

Mine was pretty fancy shmancy, I must say.  Quite sparkly and glam.  I may need to wear it grocery shopping, to a family gathering, or to my next monster shaman voodoo dancer tribe meeting.

So there ya go.  …Now what else are we going to do for the other 16 hours of the day?!?