Creative Day: Centerpiece N Clothespin Toy

Hi, Friends!

It's June already, which means summer is here, and I'd like to share with you our seasonal living room decoration. We have a corner dresser that also serves as some sort of "foundation" for our themed centerpiece, and this time I go with the "Heigh-ho! It's six dwarves off to work, they go!" theme. Yep. Six, not seven, because I only have six dwarf figurines. As usual I use anything I have around the house to complete my project: 

 

used cardboard boxes to create different heights for the "landscape",

my son's pictured story books to add textures and cheerful colors,

my sage green tablecloth I got as gift several years ago to create the "grass" effect for the dwarves' landscape,

some random decorative pieces I already own: gingerbread house figurines, fake flowers I got from gift parcels, some old candles, some old teddy bear dolls, 

some used green glass bottles to add heights to the whole look.

 

Looks cute and festive and summery, rite!

 

A closer shot:

On another creative note. You might already know that I'm not the kind of parents who shower my child with toys. Michael has old-fashioned toys like building blocks, books, some stuffed animals (he like animals, real or not), doctor set, car toys. We plan to get him a mini bicycle when he reaches three years old. I strongly believe that children will be more creative, have better attention span, appreciate their belongings more, and learn to be more creative as well as use their imagination, when they have a limited number of toys and play with things around the house. I was raised with not too many toys, and even then, looking back, I feel that I still had too many toys!

 

Still, what I witness from time to time is just simply amazing. We should give our children more credit and not underestimate their capacity for resourcefulness. Sometimes, children can show abilities that completely take us by surprise!

 

For example, on this very particular day, my two year old son approached me when I had my snack to show me his newest "invention". He had taken a pair of my chopsticks and created "car on a stick" toy. He waved them around like flags or lollypops!

 

But what he did next taken me aback even more. He placed the "car on a stick" on the dining table, then holding the chopstick as the "center", he created some sort of merry go round, moving the little car toy in circling motion!

Bored with the car on a stick, he got down from his chair, ran outside, and came back carrying a plastic bag with my clothespins from the laundry line. I wondered what a two year old was going to do with his mother's clothespin, then he began to build some sort of random structure with the colorful clothespins. He is making his own lego! Of course, the shapes are irregular, but still. I'm amazed at his creativity, proactivity to make do and entertain himself with anything available to him, and focus in doing his little "projects"!

 

I'm much happier letting him play with my clothespins than him spending hours playing with gadgets! Let children be children, not miniature adults. They still have a lot of time to be adults later on!

 

 

This is another ones of his favorite games. Playing under the laundry line, he pretends that he was riding a bus and he waved bye-bye at Mommy through the "window". Bored with playing "The Wheels on The Bus" - it's his favorite nursery rhyme of all time, by the way - he started putting on clothespins on the laundryline, then picking them up one by one and put them in a small basket. Amazed, I asked him, "Michael, what are you doing?" He answered, "I'm picking apples from the tree, Mommy!"

 

Children have a lot to learn while growing up. However, we, adults, can learn so so much just from watching our children.