Not sure if I’ve mentioned this or not, but we homeschool Than.  It’s lots of work, lots of fun and very rewarding.  We’re part of a great co-op here in Phoenix’s East Valley so he gets plenty of socialization with other children, and I get lots of help when needed.

We also belong to a great Mom’s group that gets together at least once a month.  At holiday times, during our “park day” we’ll have a potluck and one of the mom’s will do a craft.  It’s funny how I’ve never done the craft.  I literally just can’t commit to it because I never know when I can walk or not.

Anyway…here’s one of the cute crafts we did at Thanksgiving last year.  Toilet paper roll turkeys.

We liked it so much, we came home and Than asked if we could make toilet roll baby chicks.

Who has all those toilet rolls around?  And paper towel rolls?

People who try paper mache of course:

The Dinosaur (this was our first try ever.  Lots of mess but worth it.)

Than also makes things on his own:

One day (before he talked me into getting real fish) he said he really wanted an aquarium.  We had foam paper and an idea.  So we both worked on this:

That only worked for a time.  Now we have 1 betta fish bowl and another 10 gallon aquarium with 4 platys (2 mickey mouse platys, 1 red wag and 1 sunburst platy), 5 neon tetras and 1 pleco.  How I miss the days of the foam paper aquarium.  It was so much easier to clean.

TIP O’ THE DAY

Have a Goodwill store in your neighborhood?  Go visit it.  Many have craft supplies.  Seriously.  Those popsicle sticks up there?  Goodwill.  Giant bag of over a hundred for 99cents.  Know those little cotton puffballs that most craft stores charge $7-$14.00 for a pack of 100?  We found them at Goodwill a HUGE pack for 99cents.  SCORE!  (Than found that deal).

Here’s what Than made with the puffballs:

We had previously found a sale on pipe cleaners and googly eyes and were really wanting to buy puffballs.  Until Than saw the bag at Goodwill we were out of luck.  Before you think he’s an enthusiastic shopper, know this.  He HATES shopping with me.  He was just trying to entertain himself when he found them.  The rest of the time in the store he was asking “are we done yet?” every 5 minutes.