Growing Sibling Relations: Build a Junk Abandtosaurus!

One of my parenting goals has always been to have children who love each other and truly delight in each other.  One way I have found helpful in building these precious relationships is to make sure they have lots of time to just be together.  Obviously, in a family setting this happens naturally, however I do also make special provisions within our school timetable to ensure the children spend 1-2-1 or 2-2-1.

T adores his younger sisters and they adore him right back.  Yesterday his older twin sisters were doing some voluntary work with the local school.  Whilst there I asked if he would like to spend an hour or so with his younger siblings building a junk model.

Building a Junk Model Dinosaur

I had been collecting junk for this project for a while, so we got it all out and the children spent some time, led by T, figuring out which bits to use as a body, head etc:

I had bought a roll of brown packing tape to cover the model in to make it look more dinosaur like without any paint:

Soon it began taking form:

The little ones were so chuffed with it and thoroughly enjoyed sticking mince pie wrappers on its back.  They then used markies to create fingers, nose, mouth and other markings:

And the final dinosaur model, with its dinosaur roaring makers:

And from every, single possible angle:

This became their favourite toy for the day, changing from dino to baby and back to dino:

A was so concerned that he was a bit wobbly on his feet that she made him a walking stick attaching it to his hand/paw/claw:

And after bed it was left on the side as an ornament:

And Gary’s reaction?  ‘What’s an elderly ET doing in our living room?’  Ha, it does look a bit ET-ish, doesn’t it?

They called it Abandtosaurus (A, B and T osaurus)!