Hot glue gun - yeah baby!

One night before bed* last month Dexter made this:

They're dogs, on a mission to the moon.  Complete with stretchy bodies, tails, legs and detailed faces.  Made from paper and sticky tape and little foil in the background attached to their space ship.  I have no idea where he gets these ideas from, and as for constructing it in 3D?!  I love this kids creativity.

It gave me an idea.  Mum gave me a hot glue gun for my birthday last year which was still sitting in its packet on my sewing shelf.  Time we put it to use!  I raided the craft stuff and found these chipboard wooden bases along with a pile of other stuff.   We made a trip to the art store for a few extras like that fake bush/foliage stuff folks use in miniature train sets.  I figured if Dex could be so creative with paper and sticky tape, he would enjoy the process of making scenes/sets/fairy homes with the ease and convenience of a hot glue gun.    

 Dexter carefully planned a fairy house, drawing his ideas first, measuring and counting out little wooden cubes for the mini dwelling...generally attacking it in his usual, thoughtful way.  I handled the glue gun at all times - it really isn't safe for little people - and the children gave me directions on where to dab the next glob of glue.  The details are hard to see in a photo but here is his little fairy house including bunk beds, a doily rug, a fridge with doors that open and close, an indoor vertical garden (someone has been looking at renovation ideas with me!) and an outside garden.

Hugo took to the project in an entirely different way, with less planning and more of an organic approach.  He calls this a Camping Area.  There is a little sleeping bag and pillow down the back and various strange 'rock' and natural formations.  A little box contains treasures for the scary diamonte-eyed camper (middle foreground) to discover.

Hot glue guns rock!  They stink like nothing else - we were doing this on a freezing rainy day so didn't have any doors or windows open which was probably a bad idea.  The tip gets incredibly hot as does the glue and I received a couple of little burns to prove it.  The glue begins to dry in seconds and is completely set within 1 minute.  So easy.  We will do this again soon.

*I mentioned in my last post his night owl nature.  He is definitely the personality type that gets his creative jiggy on in the later part of the evening.  Wonder where he gets that from?  Hugo and Will on the other hand are morning people through and through.  

Hugo's drawings

Today I finally got around to photographing some of the HUGE pile of drawings that Hugo has created in recent months.  He loves drawing and is more and more interested in writing words and letters too.  He can write a few words by heart such as Hugo, Dex, Mum, Dad, go, stop, dog...though he can be rather creative with the order of the letters.  Many of his 'words' are completely made up, often with actual letters of the alphabet, often letter-like scribbles.  He likes me to spell out words as he writes them and checks each letter first by drawing it in the air and saying 'S is like this, isn't it mum?' etc.

I bought him a few workbook style early literacy activity books, you know the type; where he can trace the letters, circle which pictures on the page begin with that letter, draw a line between capital and lower case letters and so on.  He is much more into these than Dexter was who basically said - why would I trace over the same letter, repeatedly across the entire page when I've just done it once already?!  Having said that, Dexter is really into the currant workbooks I bought him (Excel's Science and Technology Ages 6-8 and a few of those cheapie School Zone publications like First and Second Grade Basics).  He hasn't spent more than 5 minutes with the Targeting Handwriting NSW Foundation Style 1 student book which was waste of $15!  And if you saw his shocking handwriting you would believe me!  Plenty of time for him to work on that though.  And it doesn't hurt to have a few of the BOS recommended workbooks around for our homeschooling records/resources...whether or not he uses them.  We can hand them onto Hugo anyway if his love for tracing letters continues.

Anyway, onto those drawings by Hugo:

He has a habit of adding little love hearts midway through someones name - naw!

I included the pen below to show perspective - how tiny and perfect is his name?  He drew this a few weeks ago, recently he has been drawing his g's backwards.

These three little letters were made early one morning - apart from Will who leaves the house at the ungodly hour of 6am or so Hugo is still the first one out of bed in this house.  This day he wrote some letters for Dexter (whose preferred sleeping pattern is one of the night owl like his mama) and placed them all around his sleeping head so that he would see them straight away upon waking.  He explained that they say 'To Dexter, Love Hugo' and include portraits of them both.