Just like his mommy and daddy, when Ollie gets into something, he becomes obsessed. Last couple months he’s been working through different art kits. It started when Diana took him Ollie to Michaels (my favorite store btw), actually it stated a little earlier than that.
A while went over to one of Diana’s aunt’s houses for a family event. Now even though all of her kids are older (high school and above), she makes sure that her house is kid-friendly. Every single time we go there, she has a box of toys for my boys to play list. Some of this stuff are things she kept from when her kids were younger, but some of these things are brand new. I don’t really expect that people who invite us over to make their places kid friendly, but it’s really touching when they do.
One of the things that she bought was a children’s weaving loom. It was one of those plastic things that you weave long fabric rubber bands through. Even though Ollie really enjoyed the toy cars they had bought for him to play with, he was more into this loom. Skip forward ahead a couple days and Diana took Ollie to Michaels. At the store, Ollie picked out a Perler bead set. Diana knew that it was borderline whether he could handle this set, but Ollie was excited so she got it for him.
With some help and guidance, he worked through hundreds of beads and that entire set. Next came an Aquabeads set, and then another Perler beads set. It was fascinating watching him work through these projects. We would often help him find the center of the project, and give him some guidance on how to work through the design (e.g. start from the inside out). There were moments of frustration, but his need to complete all of the designs on the idea sheet, and then every example on the box, motivated him through these sets.
Next up was a Hey Clay kit that Diana picked out for him. When you buy this kit, it comes with fast-drying clay and a code that you can use to access an iPad app that explains how to make a monster, animal, alien or bird. The little characters you make are animated on the app. The instructions go over basic modeling techniques, break down each step, and when you are doing putting your model together, you wait overnight for it to dry and your model is ready to go.
Diana starting doing these kits with Ollie, so he quickly associated this with something that he did during “mommy-time.” It’s really cool to watch them together working through the process of making these cute little models. Similar to his other art projects, the results are often flawed, but that doesn’t take away from Ollie’s pride in his work. With the Perler beads sometimes he would notice that things were off, but other times he didn’t really seem to care. I pointed out mistakes at times, but other times I would let it go, which is a similar approach I see Diana working through with Ollie.
Ollie is almost done with all of the Hey Clay kits. We aren’t sure what’s next, crochet? Whatever it is, I'm sure it will be great. I'm really proud of his work, and I can see that with each little project he finishes, he's proud of himself.
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