The craft table is sh!t. There, I said it.
I hate everything about it and I bet there are other parents out there that cringe at thought of it!!!
It’s a smorgasbord of inedible items that escaped a doomed trip to the dump served up to your kids on a tasting platter heavily disguised as an educational exercise for your child. But you, the parent, end up doing all the work as your child covers themselves in glitter claiming to be creating magic with pixie dust!!! I hate the craft table!!
I first came in contact with the craft table at my local playgroup. I’m a stay-at-home dad of three kids and with the older two off at school I thought it would be a good idea to take my little, almost-four-year-old boy to playgroup as he is starting kindy next year. We thought it would be the ideal time to socialise him with other little people his own age in a fun, controlled environment. Kind of like when you take your dog to the park on the leash a couple of times to see how he reacts to the other dogs before you are willing to let him run loose off the lead.
Also, our little guy has the physical appearance of a bull terrier and an older brother who was a biter. So we thought it was in our best interests to see if we were going to need to send him to kindy in a muzzle.
First Meet & Greet with the Craft Table
We walk through the child protective gate; the little guy’s eyes light up as we pass a sandpit and some tricycles. We are greeted at the door by the playgroup teacher her smile after years of working with kids looked permanent like the chiselled features of Joker without the clown makeup.
She explains the benefits of doing crafts with your kids and I took the bait hook, line and sinker. She guided us to the craft table then explained that today we are making the Easter Bunny. I thought fantastic, what a fun activity. It was the week before Easter and the playgroup teacher then added that after everybody makes their bunny we are going to do an egg hunt. Wow, I thought this place was awesome; I wasn’t to know the impending terror my time at the craft table would bring.
I sit down on the tiny chair with my knees up around my ears thinking they know adults will be here right. Yet all the chairs are tiny. Surely, it should be the other way around as most of the kids are running around while all the adults sit awkwardly. They have scissors and staplers on the table which would pose a far greater risk than an average-sized chair!
Right, time to have a crack at the task; I look at the contents of the craft table. I don’t see the pieces to the puzzle that is the Easter Bunny. All I see is a bunch of fiddly crap my little bloke is going to cover himself in or try to eat. On the table we have toilet rolls, I’m guessing last handled by people who have just competed for their business and after washing their hands thought to themselves, I bet this would make an excellent torso for an Easter Bunny. We have paddle pop sticks, some with the tooth marks of their previous owners clearly visible. We have red cellophane. Where on an Easter Bunny does the red cellophane go?!? We have silver glitter and clag glue.
I can’t make an Easter Bunny out of this crap, I look to my little guy and he is using the paddle pop stick like a spoon gulping mouthful after mouthful of clag glue. I try to wrestle the loaded paddle pop stick out of his hands, like a police officer wrestling a gun from an armed assailant, and just like the movies the paddle pop stick accidentally discharges its glue contents into the hair of the innocent girl next to us.
Feeling the impact of the glue she rubs her head with her glittered covered hand, making her bob cut look like a sparkly Christmas decoration. Her mum looks at me as if I did it on purpose; as if I had covered her daughter in petrol and lit her on fire; as if my only intention was to ruin her day. I stand and declare my innocence, grab my boy and head to the simpler life of the sandpit. THE CRAFT TABLE IS SH!T!!!!!!!!
Written by our resident Daddy Blogger – Fabien Clark
