Gifts from the heart, part three

Sometimes it is very easy to see where a child's interest lie in a class. I have one young boy who is very much into creating sculptures at the moment.

Even more interesting to him, robots.

He told me he would like to use robots for subject matter at the end of class one week. I told him we could both start collecting bits and pieces of "junk" and use it to create a sculpture. Although I did not anticipate him coming to class the following week with his bag of bits and pieces since we had also talked about starting the silk scarf for his mother, he on the other hand was eager to start working on robots!

But who am I to say no? I mean it is their class and students should be spending time working on things that interest them and that they enjoy, so I told him that we would get the resist down on his scarf and then spend the rest of the class on building a robot.

I scrambled a bit for supplies as I had not held up my end of the bargain collecting "bits and pieces", but luckily I'm a hoarder of stuff and I had some of the paint cans left from creating the treat pails in October. So I gave him one of those for the base and pulled a bunch of "bits and pieces" I had stashed in the junk drawer in the studio for him to utilize too.

At first I gave him a hammer to nail things in place because what boy doesn't like hammering things? But the noise level was such that the other student was getting overwhelmed and he was having difficulty getting things to stay like he wanted, so we changed to glue. In the end, hot glue was the best so for safety, I was his assistant in getting things into place so there were no burnt fingers.

He built a reindeer robot.

8 year old

What is really cute is the fact that the eyebrows are magnets. So he can change the expression at whim.

He had so much fun creating this, he wanted to make another one for his dad for Christmas. So at the beginning of class he would continue to work on his silk scarf for his mom and then finish with working on his robot.

I love this little guy.  He filled the glass jar with screws and nails to give it a metallic look and because his dad "likes to build things". He was so excited about these two gifts. I'm not sure who the large reindeer robot was for, but when his mother came to pick him up, he refused to let her see either of them. As beautiful as his silk scarf turned out, and in the end he was quite happy and excited with the scarf, where his true joy lied was in these robots.

I hope his dad and whoever else was given these gifts find as much joy in them as the student did creating them.