Father’s Day Card

Sweet Pea is 37 months old.

From: The Crafty Crow featured a cute Father’s Day card from No Time for Flashcards and I decided to do something similar for Sweet Pea’s Grandpa.

Material:

• A white piece of paper or card stock.
• A blank card or colored card stock cut and folded into a card shape.
• Masking tape or adhesive vinyl letters. (I had some trouble getting the blue kind off masking tape off of Sweet Pea’s card.  Next time I would probably use a less sticky variety.)
• Scissors.
• Do-A-Dot markers (or craft paint and a sponge brush).
• A large sheet of paper to protect your tot’s work surface.
• A smock or bib to protect your tot (optional).
• Tweezers (optional).

Procedure:

• Decide on a word for the front of your card.
• Cut several pieces of masking tape  off of the roll and then cut them lengthwise in half (or thirds if you want an even thinner “font”).
• Use the thin strips of masking tape  to spell out the word on the front of your card.

• Make several loops of masking tape and use them to stick the card stock to a larger sheet of paper.
• Put a smock on your tot.
• Ask your tot to choose 3 Do-A-Dot Marker colors for the card.  Hand them the lightest color first and let them start dotting the card stock.
• Let your tot continue dotting with the next color and then finally the darkest color.  Tell your tot that you want them to try to cover most of the white on the card.  Especially make sure that all of the white around the taped word is gone.

• Let your card dry completely.  Ours took about 2 hours.

• Carefully remove the tape.  You may need to use tweezers to get the tape started.

• Cut out the word and glue it to the front of the card.

Observations: Sweet Pea likes anything that involves the Do-A-Dot Markers, so she had a good time.  She did have a hard time getting all of the white covered.   Several times she said that she was done, and I would have to point out spots that she had missed.  However, she didn’t seem to mind that I wanted her to keep working on the card.

This certainly wasn’t as fast as handing Sweet Pea a piece of folded paper and a box of crayons, but I like the results a lot.  The whole thing probably took 3 hours from start to finish, but at least 2 hours of that was drying time.

Notes from the Trenches: If you are making a Father’s Day card and don’t want it to look like a Mother’s Day card, you may need to hide the pink Do-A-Dot marker before asking your tot to choose their colors.  I try to let Sweet Pea make lots of choices, but I am not above manipulating the outcome.

The Do-A-Dot markers bled through onto the back of the card stock.  I intended for her to work directly on the card we going to give to her grandpa, but once I saw how messy the other side looked, I knew I would have to cut it out and glue it down to another card.

Rating: 1 Stars * (Fun)  – But despite the 1 star rating, this was a really good activity.

P.S. Wow, I just realized this was my 100th post!