Cut and cover

Here's how a pair of scissors became the catalyst for a lovely creative activity:

1. I placed our brand new scissors-for-small-hands on top of a tempting pile of magazine and newspaper pages. Then I waited...

2. My reluctant 6 year old crafter soon spotted the new scissors and asked if they actually worked (clearly fed up with our old, very blunt pair).

3. I suggested in a casual way that if he fancied he could try them out on... say... this pile of papers.

4. He took the bait and tested the scissors by cutting out a big picture of Rango and then announced he was going to try them on something else. Apparently there were some really interesting pictures in that pile of newspapers and magazines (I wonder how that happened).

5. My 4 year old appeared and of course taking turns with the scissors was now required. This worked out well though; the picture selecting spanned the waiting time beautifully.

6. My 6 year old realised that Daddy would just love the picture of the Chinese dancers because he's in China at the moment.

7. A game evolved whereby we were now cutting out pictures for Daddy - for when he gets back from China (which is on Sunday by the way).

8. We soon covered the floor with interesting things Daddy has missed since he's been away. A horse, the new Olympic Velodrome, a cauliflower and chickpea curry recipe and a large zebra were amongst the images selected.

9. We snip-snip-snipped and chat-chat-chatted for 20 minutes and they decided these picture clippings would make a great Welcome Home Daddy banner. It was too late to start that though, so we made big pile of the pictures and got ready for bed.

10. I chuckled to myself at the thought of my reluctant crafter happily doing all that cutting and creative planning. And I looked forward to the gluey banner project to come.

[Next day... we made the banner!]