Snow Day (Two Ways to do Paper Snowflakes) and Lose Your Mind

Today I decided to plan our day around a snowflake theme.  After trolling around Pinterest I came up with two activities to entertain us.  3D paper snowflakes and painted (old school) paper snowflakes.  Let me just say that whoever sat down and came up with the 3D paper snowflake either a) has way too much spare time b) has never attempted to do a craft with a child EVER or c) is an evil minion sent here to wreck havoc.  3D snowflake...I mean what was I thinking, it took my three yr old and I ONE HOUR to complete one and we messed it up!!! After much love, patience, and some cuss words (from Me not the preschooler) I realized we were supposed to have six pieces of paper not five.  The good news is from the first snowflake it can only get better.  The 2nd one only took THIRTY MINUTES (believe me that was great) and we used all six sections so it actually looked like it was supposed to.  By the time we got around to the 3rd snowflake I had it down.  It only took FIFTEEN MINUTES;-)  We stopped at three!!! They are cool looking but it might be something I would suggest for middle school kiddos and up.

Of course the kiddos had no appreciation for my uber complicated snowflake art (they are only 6, 5, and 3 after all).  They wanted to just make old school paper snowflakes.  The ones where you hand off white paper and scissors then spend the next 6 months picking up snowflake confetti.  I caved but I had to spice it up a little, right?  So we pulled out the paint and painted our white paper with different shades of white, blue and gray.  Then I went back to Pinterest (it's like a drug) and found some really cool paper snowflake templates. After they dried we (mostly I, the templates proved too complicated for little hands) cut out our snowflakes. They look great and are the favorites according to my boys.

We had a great afternoon of craft time but as a Mom I feel the need to point out a moral to the blog post..."If it ain't broke, don't fix it.".  I get so irritated about candy...yes I said candy.  The powers that be are constantly changing our Reese's, Snickers, and M&M's.  Why??  What is wrong with the originals??  Why do we need white chocolate and mint filled??  Well probably for the same reason I felt I needed 3D snowflakes and painted paper ones using templates....we are a World of one uppers.  It's the mind set of whatever you can do I can do better.  That's great....motivation is what will keep the World going BUT sometimes new doesn't equal better it just equals new.  My advice if your kiddos want to make paper snowflakes anytime soon then throw the copy paper and scissors at them while you load the dishwasher or whatever else you haven't been able to get to during the course of your day.  Sometimes kids need original!!!