Ethan’s nursery are running an Easter Bonnet competition, the children have to make/decorate an Easter Bonnet and the bonnets are judged on the children’s own work. We haven’t had the chance to take part in many of the nursery activities lately as I haven’t been 100% with it and organised so I really wanted to take part in this activity.
We had one major hurdle we had to overcome, the bonnet must be the children’s own work. Holding Ethan’s attention and getting his hands dirty were not going to be easy but I didn’t want to give up and not try.
So yesterday we purchased an Easter Bonnet and some Easter craft bits for our bonnet.
Ethan had fun modelling the bonnet before we started to decorate it.
We decided the garden was the best place for our messy activity so we had to wait for Ethan to do some exploring before he would come over to the table. It took lots of attempts to get Ethan’s attention and our creative moments had to be fitted in between running around the garden, but very slowly, with lots of help Ethan was able to decorate his bonnet.
Ethan’s favourite part of the decorating was adding the stickers, he easily engaged with this part and if I had known he would have liked this part the best I would have got him more stickers to add.
It took a while to complete but we finally finished the Easter Bonnet.
This was Darren’s first experience of trying to engage Ethan in a craft activity and I think he would have easily given up at Ethan’s second run around the garden. It has taken me a while but I have finally learnt that these activities take lots of patience, and if you can get Ethan to engage with you, only for a minute, you deserve a medal. It’s all about small steps, not giving up and trying everything. Even if you know it’s going to be hard work engaging Ethan.
brilliant work Ethan! Love the bonnet. (and well done mum and dad for sticking with it) My son made a moshi themed one this year! x