Crafts from School

One of my favorite things about picking Rachel up from school (aside from seeing her beautiful face and hearing her precious stories) is seeing what crafts and other info. is in her bookbag. I can hardly wait to unzip her bag and look in her folder for all the goodies. So far, she has brought home some adorable artwork. She made a cut-out picture of herself complete with a pink, flowery fabric shirt and yellow yarn for her hair and her hands. She's done a handprint with a cute poem about the first day of school, a vase with flowers and all of her family member's names on a flower and a couple of other things. But, Friday when I picked her up, she was holding a rectangular piece of orange construction paper with pink and green marshmallows glued to it. They have been working on patterns, and this was the ABAB pattern. Like, pink, green, pink, what comes next? type of pattern. Anyway, she was very proud of this craft and said not to bend it and that we couldn't eat the marshmallows because they had glue on them. She also told me a funny story about while they were making their patterns, Ms. Kim had the bag of marshmallows next to Rachel and she kept sneaking out marshmallows to eat. She said, "I try not to let her see me, but then she did and moved the bag away." I thought that was pretty funny. So, when we got home, I put the beautiful ABAB marshmallow craft on the counter. Then, I thought it might get wet or splattered, so I put it in the window in between the den and kitchen. I guess I wasn't thinking about how often Bradley stands on the couch and looks through that window. About an hour later, I saw Bradley sucking on a piece of paper and I couldn't remember where the paper had come from. I went to get it and then noticed that it was Rachel's craft and there wasn't a single marshmallow on it. There were 9 glue spots where the marshmallows had been. I grabbed the paper, but there wasn't anything else I could do. I figured the teachers had used non-toxic glue for the crafts so hopefully Bradley wouldn't get sick. (he didn't!) But, Rachel was so upset and started crying when she saw that Bradley had ruined her craft. Of course, it really wasn't Bradley's fault. He just seized the opportunity of a poorly placed craft...good job, mommy!! I tried to console Rachel and told her we would re-do the craft with new marshmallows, but ours were white. So, as we did crafts later that day, I painted some marshmallows with kid's craft paint and left them to dry on the table. We figured we would glue them in the ABAB pattern today. But, another poor plan by mommy, Bradley found them this morning and ate 6 of them. So, we gave up on the ever-tempting marshmallows and opted for colored, spiral, uncooked noodles. Rachel glued an ABAB pattern out of the green and orange noodles. She was finally satisfied that we had sort of redone her craft. And, I learned a valuable lesson: If Rachel brings home a "tasty-looking" craft, keep it WAY out of reach of Bradley!! So far, he's shown no sign of getting sick from ingesting glue or paint, so I think he's fine! Thank goodness!