Playing Hearts

This week in BabyKids we returned to the shapes motif. Having Valentine's Day in the week seemed good enough reason to do hearts. One of the sites I frequent for ideas has repeatedly suggested lacing activities, so I thought the heart shape would be perfect for it. So I bought pinkish plastic from the hyaku yen, made a template, copied the template 15 times, cut out the 15 hearts. So I thought most of my job was done. Wrong-o. I got out the hole puncher and punched approximately 25 holes each in 15 hearts. That took forever. I had to lace each heart to get the right length of yarn (too long and it will get knotted, to short and kids will freak out). Then I had to tie the pink yarn on to the 15 hearts. All this took longer than expected. I had bought some very thin dowels from the hyaku yen and had to cut them into 15 three inch segments. Then I taped (red tape) the 15 dowel needles to the yarn on the 15 hearts. Then I had to sand the tips of the dowels so that they didn't catch on the yarn or give BabyKids splinters. This took most of my three day weekend last week, but I knew I could also use it again next year. It worked in some classes better than others, but can't say it was a huge success. Nonetheless I got some cute pics out of it.












...and here's about a bazillion more photos."