Black Or White

Today, I wanted to let Sophie practice pasting with glue (without ripping everything out after that). It was challenging because she had quite a different agenda in mind... She just wanted to play with the pom poms and smear the glue all over like paint. I could tell she did not really like the feel of glue on her fingers yet she could not resist fiddling with the pom poms and cotton wool. Messy... but I think she is starting to get the idea of what we were doing after our craft today.

I started off with a Chinese book (something different) about a lamb. I love this series because it has the hanyu pinyin version below the Chinese characters. Phew! That helped a lot! I think I should start airing my "dusty" and "mouldy" Chinese. After all, Sophie needs to learn Chinese, too!

And of course, I let Sophie read her Farm by Fiona Watt since it is a touchy-feely book on farm animals (sheep and lambs). I find the sheep very adorable and easy to make so I let Sophie try making stick puppet of sheep (one black and one white).

Farm by Fiona Watt

First, I cut out "clouds" from a sheet of black paper and the sheep's face and legs from a sheet of light blue paper. Then I glued the craft stick in between two "clouds" after the legs were attached. Finally, the face was pasted and the sheep puppets were ready for Sophie to work on.

I had to help Sophie apply glue all over the puppets and hand her the black pom poms and white cotton wool balls. I deliberately did the black sheep puppet first because the poms poms were easier to manage than cotton wool balls. She watched as I showed her how to press the pom poms down. Surprisingly, she pasted a couple of them without trying to rip the rest off. She did , however, stroke the pom poms and cotton wool balls (like what she does with her touchy-feely books).

End Product - Black and White Sheep Puppets