never as planned

When doing art with young children, do not have an end product in mind.  Or you will be disappointed.  Every time.


This is a fabulous book for art experiences with little ones.  I used it a lot when I taught  - the projects are open ended and focus on the process, not the (end) product.


With that said (to myself), we decided to make big beads.  I envisioned these fat beads with big holes painted in beautiful hues of the rainbow that Abby and I could string on pipe cleaners and stack towers with and use as pretend cookies or something.

Making the dough

Exploring the dough

Making beads.  Even after multiple attempts of showing how to make a bead, Abs just wanted to pull the dough into a million pieces.  I went with it.  My dream of rainbow beads began to die.  

Two day pause to let the beads (or millions pieces of dough) dry... hard thing for a two year old

Painting beads ... and paper... and hands... and arms... 

Example of beads.  Right.  Not what I thought beads would look like either.  And hot pink was the only color little miss wanted.  Okay.    

Add caption

 Which morphed into this:

And that's about what we have to show for our bead making adventure.  No beads.  And that's okay.  It's not about the product.  It's about the process.  

Sounds like a motto for life, right?