The letter L is an exciting one… not only can we write letters to lovely little ladies, we can lick lollipops, let laughs loose, lay around lazily…  and make a lion lickety-split.  (sorry about that one…)

I found a fun craft at DLTK’s Crafts for Kids…  I wanted to make a more “realistic” one though – I don’t know of any lion who curls his hair (although her lion is super cute!!!), and, realistically, I’m not going to be able to sit and curl construction paper like that right now.

As you can see in the pictures above, I cut circles out of cereal boxes.  I thought that the bend in the circle from the side of the box would bother me, but it really didn’t.  I just put that part at the top of the head.  And you can see in the first picture (with EJ trying to force his head through the mask’s hole), I taped a popsicle stick onto the circle (with packing tape.  Glue doesn’t dry fast enough around here.  If it’s not firmly attached by the time we start a craft, it’s never going to be attached again.).

I also cut a whole bunch of 4 inch (give or take a bit) strips from a piece of construction paper and gave EJ his glue stick.  My lion mask is the one with the strips actually glued to it… I kind of staggered the strips, and I bent the ones on top out a little bit to give it that “realistic” look. heh heh…

Voila!  A completed lion mask!  Now if your child is so inclined, he or she can run around roaring like a lion, and you have have hours of fun from 5 minutes of gluing.

At least, that’s what I envision could happen.

What is really happening here is EJ trying to get the popsicle stick off the cardboard circle.  He worked really hard at that, and I believe some tears were even shed.

Then, when I took my completed mask to him to see if he wanted to play lion with me, he hid behind his rocking chair.  Good times.

Seriously, though – has anyone else had a child who used to be so into crafts suddenly rebel (at the tender age of 2.95)?  EJ does not want to do crafts any more.  I don’t know if I’m presenting them wrong, or if this is just a boy thing… is it just a boy thing?  Anyone?  I need help understanding this.

And a lot of patience.