Buby + Bleu: Paper Craft

Buby wanted to give each of his school friends a lil' treat for Halloween. We threw out some ideas and decided on creepy cool pencils with personalized pumpkin tags.

I tailored the project for Buby, who is quite enamored with writing utencils these days. Every step reinforced some skill he's been working on. For instance, he's just beginning to read and write independently... starting with his own name and those of each of his classmates.

Buby loves to sit around the kitchen table in the evenings and teach me how to spell, sound out, and rhyme names like T-A-Y-L-O-R and S-O-P-H-I-A and N-I-C-O. Using a skinny pencil and cutting on lines are old skills he is forever fine tuning.

So we picked up 40 Halloween pencils at Target for just $3.99 and a new hole punch for $1.60 at the village pharmacy. I had the rest of the supplies in my inventory, including orange card stock, mini alphabet stampers, a blank ink pad, and orange curling ribbon.

Bleu napped for three hours on Tuesday. The house was unusually quiet. I had a lovely time sitting next to Buby and chit chatting about nothing in particular. Me telling him what a fab job he was doing. Him telling me how much his friends would love-love-love what he was making for them.

I've noticed Buby can come away from the smallest art and craft project with a huge sense of pride and accomplishment. I like that. Plus, we always want for one-on-one time. I think everyone with more than one babes craves it. Buby and I certainly do.

Step 1: Dump 101 plastic cookie cutters onto the playroom floor and look for anything resembling Halloween. Buby finds bats, cats and pumpkins.

Step 2: Figure out how to hold cookie cutter/stencil with one hand while drawing with the other.

Step 3: Space them evenly so as to fit three on a page.

Step 4: Work on pencil grip. His teacher has already pulled me aside to discuss. I'm almost 33 years old, and I've never once held my pencil correctly. I'm not sure I'm the one to be reinforcing this.

Step 5: Count pumpkins to make sure there are 11 total. Buby wants to make three more for Gilly, Lily, and Grace. Because in his mind they are his "really best friends."

Step 6: Stretch legs. Play hide-in-seek under the craft table. Because we can.

Step 7: Cut out pumpkins with big-boy scissors and remember not to chop off stems.

Next: Search teeny tin with 26 even teenier letter stamps in it for the correct letters of each classmate's name. Line them up in the right order.

Step 8: Stamp away. Try to evenly space the letters. This is not an easy task when working with such small stamps. Great for fine motor development.

Step 9: Use a single-hole punch for the very first time. This is the most fun step for Buby. In fact, after he finishes the pumpkin craft he hole-punches an entire sheet of 8x11 paper.