Her “skills” in improvising seems to have extended into her homework.

See, they are teaching her “long” vowels, like school, food, or, feel, reel, and using a different coloured pencil for these vowels.

You guessed it. In her homework she had decided to first write the letters of the same pencil, and then literally fill in the blanks with the coloured pencil for the vowels.

I guess it gets the job done, I just hope that she will still end up learning the actual word and not finding more efficient ways to complete her writing!

No, I didn’t tell Hot Mummee about this… She may well get Caitlin to redo the whole thing!

I have mentioned before about Caitlin’s creative streak. When we are at home just chilling and the kids are watching the idiot box, Caitlin would actually “multitask” and do some handicraft, using the scrap A4 papers that HM and I bring home from the office.

She’d make her own pretend mobile phone, camera, toll card, baton (I think she means the wand that an orchestra conductor uses), just last weekend it was a walkie-talkie. She’d get me to play along sometimes using the corresponding walkie-talkie, be the toll plaza / booth, or she’d just draw something; lately it’s the not-so-surprising-for-her-age family “portrait” complete with Daddee having blue hair and as stick-figure skinny as he’d wished he was.

She has an interest in this art stuff, just like Daddee… okay she does acknowledge the joke about Daddee’s hair being blue, so it’s not really a talent gone awry.

Anytime that Playhouse Disney channel shows a 5-minute filler of anything remotely handicrafty or sketchy, she’d head straight for the pile of A4′s and try and repeat what she saw.

So, how do I cultivate this talent, or at least, this interest in her? Our working hours are such that we really only get to see and spend time with her from dinner onwards, and before long it’d be her bedtime already.Otherwise it’s reading with her, either her story picture books or her school books for revision. On weekends, we try and treat the kids by simply visiting my folks, the mall, the pool if Caitlin isn’t still having the sniffles / cough.

Art classes at the shops in the malls and the works that the kids bring home do look impressive, but it’s all assisted and guided in that (I believe) the kids are told what to do. Caitlin does these things all from her own imaginative play. And I don’t want to stifle this flow of imagination and crafts.

But, as Moomykin had suggested in the last blog post, maybe it’s time (dare I say or suggest to the OCD-ed HM??) for Caitlin to start with water colour next??

Here she is making gameboard pieces. She had already cut them up (yes, with grown-up scissors; been at it since last year I think) and here she is decorating them.

buh-bye;

Grr-grr- “go-go” is what is uttered whenever we are ready to go out. Now he’s the one telling us we should go out.

Ma’am-mee (nope, still not calling Daddee);

circa and dar (“circle” and “star”, when Daddee was doodling with him);

tonne-ner whenever we enter a tunnel, or even under overhead bridges that remotely resemble anything undercover;

Runs around in circles of present-moment’s object of desire on the floor- a toy, a piece of paper, etc.

Caitlin:
She was pretty proud that she could rubber-band tie her rolled up doodling (“treasure map”) with a double twirl all by herself.

Caitlin’s cough and sniffles is getting better; thank goodness there’s no fever otherwise I’d be bringing her straight to a doctor, for obvious reasons of what’s in the air these days.

It’s mid afternoon. I think we’ll grr-grr to Midvalley using the tonne-ner parking, since really there’s nothing to do otherwise at home

But one fine weekend day recently…

She decided to get kakak to make a paper boat. Fine, I thought, quite typical and economical way to entertain herself on a lazy Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Next thing I hear her looking for another piece of paper to play with. As we have a stack of A4 paper we use for scrap, Caitlin has been privy to that for her artistic expressions too, with her colour pencils or just simply doodling.

Then she asks for my tube of paper glue. Not one to discourage improvisation and creativity, I went to get it, and watched what she was up to.

She stuck the paper boat in the middle of the A4. I still didn’t know what she was up to.

Then she coloured the A4, surrounding the boat, blue.

I almost exclaimed the “S” word which I myself have told her not to use! I was amazed! She has effectively made a 3 dimensional model of the boat in the middle of the sea!

Hot Mummee was also just as impressed, being the less artistic between us (we know where Caitlin gets her genes from

We then spent the following hour or so making “passengers”…

We should have more indoor creative feats like this often

Bit of background: Anna is also a parent, but who is also very good with her hands. A lot of the joy from the toys and decor that surrounds Anna’s home are actually made by herself. This is something I totally admire (my brother Wyluxx is also good with his hands like that, but this isn’t about him In fact, Dr Pixie is pretty creative as well with the paint brush), because I feel that a toy / source of enjoyment is more meaningful when it was actually made with effort and from the heart, and not just purchased with cash. It makes the gesture / token all the more meaningful. It is also an example I would like to set for my kids: To be creative and resourceful.

So anyway. To me, the cardboard kitchen didn’t look too hard. After all, I had the photos of the prototype and a rough idea of how Anna approached it.

About 1-2 weeks ago during work I went to visit an ex-dept. They are in the middle of moving to another location and had new cardboard boxes for everyone for packing. I saw them and asked for a few, with this project ticking over in my head already. I hadn’t started this project all this time simply because I hadn’t come across any good cardboard yet; and I wasn’t prepared to go out of my way to buy them.

So I got to planning. It was a school night. I had to get Caitlin to bed first so as not to be interrupted. It was actually a good excuse for her to go sleep alone (I usually put her to bed). My excuse was, “Daddee has to go do some drawings, to measure and cut the shapes to make the kitchen…” I have shown her Anna’s site and the kitchen, and she was so excited about it.

It worked. She went to bed. And I got cracking. Here’s my attempt at the prototype.

Here’s the so-called completed work.

You will understand, then, that I initially had second thoughts about sharing this post. Why? Oh no reason, other than I totally screwed up TWO perfectly brand new cardboard boxes in the process.

Yes, it looks like shit. Not a single line was 90 degrees to each other. The “unit” was wobbly, with lots of inadequately cut gaps / slots (of either too wide or too narrow) making the cardboard warp after assembly.

Yes, I embarrass myself.

At the risk of sounding defensive, I had initially planned on calling it a night after I had put together my own prototype. I guess I got impatient myself, ‘cos soon after that, I thought the hell with it and started cutting up the cardboard boxes themselves to finish it that night.

The next morning, in something of a consolation, Caitlin woke to see it, and loved it. My joy was very very shortlived when she quickly followed with, “But it’s not finished; we have to paint it!”

You see, she’s got Anna’s photos of the perfect cardboard kitchen etched in her mind now, and expected her perfect Daddee to at the very least come up with an identical one.

I was in trouble. The pressure to deliver was very quickly building up, almost equalling the performance anxieties with Hot Mummee.

For the following days I was delaying her. Not that I wanted to abandon the project, but it was already a disaster- so why paint it. She’s been playing with it though, hiding stuff in the “oven” and asking me to close my eyes, and then opens it with “SURPRISE!” revealing whatever it is inside.

A few nights ago, while she was (already and still) playing with it, she reached into the “oven”, lost her balance and fell in, effectively collapsing the whole kitchen.

It was pretty painful for me. Not because of the damage, but that Caitlin was teary eyed soon after.

I don’t know if it was because she knew the effort I had put in; it’s likely the simpler explanation, that her toy is now broken. Yeah, the simpler explanation…

At this point I don’t know what to do with the kitchen. I could reinforce it with more cardboard bits, or I could abandon this one, learn from it, and start over…

Hey, that lightweight polystyrene material that the art studio uses to stick posters on (as backing) looks pretty sturdy too….. Heh heh.