Berry Best Preschool Subscription + Other Crafting Meltdowns...

We had an utter craft-tastrophe this morning with at least a dozen mega meltdowns and a river of snot and tears, all caused by various craft frustration. Egads. It actually started with milk on the cheerios (I want it! No I don't! Now it's there! World is ending!) Three year olds are far from sensible (or maybe it's just mine who thinks the world is ending if I ask her to slow down, pause, or listen at any point), but this was a bit over the top. Scissors, stickers, coloring - it all just fueled the fire. Ugh.

Now that we've all calmed down (chocolate milk for her, Dr. Pepper for me, chocolate chunk cookies for all), here's a look back:

We're trying out a new monthly subscription sorta like our crafting one, this is from Berry Best Preschool and includes art + curriculum, supposedly a learning activity and a craft for each day. We ordered the 3 day a week subscription for February, and started it today. The "learning activity" was a worksheet to trace and practice making #9s. Sounds easy enough, and I'm pretty sure they do similar things at TC's daycare, so I didn't think twice.

Cue first meltdown.

I'm not sure what I did wrong here, but TC didn't want to follow directions, listen to directions, or allow me to demonstrate. It pushed her well over the edge into toddler tantrum territory. Not awesome. Also, she's terrible at making #9s, so I feel like I kinda failed too. Hmmm....

The "craft activity" was much more benign and one of the few things we accomplished today without tears (ahh, parenting....). It was a "puppet" to celebrate groundhog's day (which was yesterday, so kinda odd to make it today...). The package contained the groundhog printed on brown paper, and a paper bag. The instructions said to pre-cut the head and body of the groundhog, and allow kids to affix the pieces to the paper bag. I used some leftover glue dots (which I still hate, but were easier to use/cleaner than actual glue) and it didn't really feel like TC did much for this. Also, here's what it looked like:

Um....isn't the point of a puppet that the MOUTH looks like it is moving? this "puppet" splits head from body...WHY WOULD WE WANT TO DO THAT?!?!?! It makes no sense, and wasn't real fun to put together.

So, it's pretty early to judge this subscription, but day 1 was kind of a bust. I would guess we'll have a lot more tracing worksheets for the "learning activity" and I'm okay with that since it is a good thing to learn, but we'll have to come to a better working relationship with them (and each other). As for the crafts...very dubious so far. This one was sorta a dumb product AND not real kid-involved to make, so I give it pretty low marks.

Fingers crossed it gets better!