Cathy at NurtureStore has come up with a fantastic idea – The Play Academy, which I’m going to take part in each week. Here’s my first entry:
It sounded like such a simple craft session when Miss Frugal asked if we could make bookmarks. She’s at the age now where she is starting to read independently and she will happily sit quietly in the corner reading to herself and she’s starting to enjoy the books that she reads – at the moment she’s reading The Twits and it’s quite funny to watch her reading, every now and again she’ll start to laugh or she’ll look really surprised at something she’s reading 😉
In contrast, Master Frugal is still showing very little interest in learning to read and whereas so far I’ve just let him learn at his own pace, I do feel that I need to start encouraging him more so I thought making a bookmark would be good for him aswell.
So, out came the card, colouring pens and the scissors and we had three quite respectable looking bookmarks within ten minutes or so. Well actually, we had two respectable bookmarks and one stumpy looking one. Miss Frugal made me the orange one and tried to cut out a fancy bottom but ended up hacking it off in a mood when it didn’t look exactly as she wanted it to (Who said she takes after me!), therefore, mine is about half the size of the other two.
The strange looking shapes you can see on the cream coloured one are supposed to be Zhu Zhu Hamsters, specifically those of the Ninja variety because, yes, we gave in and bought Master Frugal a Kung Zhu fighting hamster. Ours is called Yama and he’s quite cute really, he just scurries around the floor saying ‘GoGoGo’ and ‘Woof’ along with a few other random noises, none of which are remotely aggressive or fighting like.
While I was unpacking the shopping and Miss Frugal was finishing the hacking of my bookmark, Master Frugal took his new toy on an exploration mission during which, Yama took a shine to the empty washing capsule container. He apparently decided he would like to live there, but obviously it had to look more Kung Zhu Hamster-ish.
So with the help of some paper and some sellotape, we ‘transformed’ the container into a home fit for for any self respecting King Zhu Hamster. We sellotaped some paper round it, added a few extra bits and voila, Yama has a home.
Then Miss Frugal got involved, performed a Lawrence Llewllyn-Bowen style makeover on it and the next thing I knew, Yama was entertaining a ladyfriend Zhu Zhu.
Look, they even have their own TV 😉
Oh yes, and the moral of that story is that it’s great to do crafts with your kids and making bookmarks *may* encourage them to read a bit more but as soon as you’ve finished said craft, you need to clear the supplies away or you may end up making a hamster house out of an empty washing capsule container.
