Father's Day crafts

Annika is now at the age where she understands things like Father's Day a little better, so we did some crafts together as Father's Day presents for Carey.  She had made him a card already at preschool (smart teachers - the kids made Mother's Day and Father's Day cards at the same time, because preschool ended in May), and she also did several drawings on her own for him.  I found a few ideas on Pinterest and we gave it a go.

Here was my first inspiration:

Source: rootsandwingsco.blogspot.ca via Pamela on Pinterest

I liked the handprints, and the bad pun ;), but I thought it would be more fun to use paint, instead of tracing the hands on paper.  Here's how ours turned out:

Is it as attractive as the one in the first picture?  No way.  Was it made with love?  Definitely.  You see, I discovered a few things while doing this project.  First of all, if you cover an 18-month-old's hands with paint, he will not want to make a neat and tidy handprint.  He will want to squish it around and make as big a mess as possible.  18-month-olds do not care what the picture looked like on Pinterest. :P  Annika was a bit better with doing the handprints (they had done painted handprints in school, so she had some "experience"), but she was not content to leave it with just that.  After I painted on the letters, she decided that it needed something more and painted on some glitter glue.  Would it have looked better without the glitter glue?  Probably.  But then it would've been MY craft, and not hers, and having a picture-perfect craft was not what was most important.  Sometimes it's more important to let your child feel like they're making a significant contribution, even if it means giving up some control.  Note to self: don't even bother trying to make any of those other adorable handprint or footprint crafts on Pinterest (at least not at this point).  Better to invest in some fingerpaints and just let the kids go at it. ;)

This was my other "craft" idea from Pinterest (okay, it's not really a craft, but I'm not sure what to call it):

Source: site.pinkpeppermintpaper.com via Pamela on Pinterest

I sat down with Annika and asked her these questions and wrote down her answers.  I thought it would be fun and cute and funny, but she got so stressed out by the questions that she didn't know the answers to!  Seriously, she almost started crying when I asked her some of the questions like "how old is Daddy?" or "how much does he weigh?".  I had to reassure her that she could take a guess and it would be okay, and that it was just for fun!  My little perfectionist. :P 
Here's the answers that she came up with:

Even though the crafts didn't go exactly as I had planned, I think they turned out great, and surprisingly, Annika actually kept them a secret until Father's Day (we had done the painting almost a week beforehand, and she is normally not good at keeping secrets for that long!).  She was so proud and happy to give her gifts to her Daddy on Father's Day, and I think he was quite happy to receive them.