Hello!
Today’s post is a little different.
For those of you who have been following along for a little while, you may have seen me mention a few times that I used to be an Early Childhood Educator before I had my own children.
I worked in this job for 7 years and absolutely loved assisting little humans with their learning and milestone’s in the first years of their lives.
I’ve often been asked if I will return to Early Education. I honestly still don’t know how to answer that. There’s so many aspects about the job that I loved – especially the creative side, decorating to rooms, photo displays etc. But there were also so many things that wouldn’t work with my life right now – shift work, paying more for childcare for my own children than I would earn with the low wages and not being about to give my own kids 100% at the end of the day when I’ve had to be there for other children all day. Maybe I’ll consider it when they’re older.
For now though, things within my home are becoming more manageable with an almost 4 year old and Bub being 8 months. I’ve suddenly regained my passion for inviting play spaces, extended learning on topics that my son shows interest in and just generally putting in a little bit more effort instead of “zoning out” (I’ll play cafe all day, but hot wheels just CANNOT hold my attention for long!).
Cue this box. I stumbled across an online shop “The Messy Caterpillar” a few months ago on my search for wooden toys. Just as I was looking for something new to do with the kids, a post of theirs popped up in my feed that they had started a subscription box (I have a real thing for sub boxes, but that’s a whole other story!).
With the subscription box being “Bee” themed and my son taking a recent interest in bees that he found in the garden – it was meant to be!
The box was filled to the brim with exciting sensory activities that my son and I had so much fun doing together. We played with these for over a week straight, and since then, bits and pieces have made it into everyday play.
I loved taking photos as we played and learned together – and what better way to document such a wonderful time than scrapbooking!
This particular layout challenged my skills in so many ways. I not only made the hexagon background (very similar to a bee themed card I made a while back, only on a bigger scale here) I also designed/drew the beehive myself. It was the first time I had even transformed an image I had drawn into a cut file so successfully.
One of the things I was most excited about incorporating into this layout was these play dough stamps! I didn’t want to ruin them by getting them covered in ink, so I used some clear embossing ink and gold embossing powder to show off these cute little images.
Overall, I think it was a wonderful week – full of learning, exploring and bonding with my boy over new and fun activities and facts (he will tell you all about how bees “spit out honey” if you ask what he learned).
If you would like to see how this layout came together, I have put together a video, which you can find here:
I can’t wait for more of these amazing subscription boxes, and to create more scrapbook layouts in the future. For now though, we’re off to plant some flowers in the garden for the bees!
