Unplugged - Glass

Glass, I thought, would be challenging with a toddler. Sharp, you know? But out of the box we went...and came upon beach glass! We have collected lots in the Great Lakes over the years, but come time for our craft, I went to the bag of glass I had bought for the craft shelf. I figured we'd save the "good stuff" for a craft when E gets a little older.

So I had this idea to make sun catchers with sea glass and Elmer's glue...I looked for some directions on the web, and didn't find any, but that didn't deter me. I got out two old canning lids (the hoop parts) and some clear contact paper to seal one side.

I used the contact paper to make a sort of shallow cup from each hoop, then poured in pools of glue. In hindsight, I should have used WAY less glue (more on that later). Then I gave E some beach glass, and was proud of myself for remembering not to give her the whole bag. Even so, she lived up to her tendency to use EVERY LAST PIECE of craft material given to her. I envisioned her placing one piece of glass at a time into the glue, mosaic style, choosing some light and some dark greens to form a nice contrasting pattern. In fact, the first thing she did was dump the entire container of glass into one of the hoops, and we spent the next ten minutes fishing the "extra" pieces out of one hoop and putting them into the other.
She did have fun with it, and we soon moved on to pressing the glass in play dough. One of our play dough cutters is a fish, and I thought glass fish scales would look cool...and they did! We read through The Rainbow Fish while she put about 20 eyes on each fish, and we talked about sharing (a theme of the book). Since we ended up with one scaly fish and one naked one, I asked if the fish wanted to share scales with each other..."No! Day don't want to share!" Oh, well. They looked pretty, anyway.
Then we waited for the glue to dry...and here we are 5 days later and IT'S STILL WET. I admit I forgot that big pools of Elmer's glue DO NOT dry. Ever. Especially when sealed airtight by contact paper. Hair dryer, AC vent, dehumidifier, forget it. I ended up peeling the paper off to allow the air to circulate, and glue puddled out everywhere. The parts that did dry contracted strangely and made weird bubbles, but the effect is actually kind of neat. I plan to wrap a ribbon around the outside and hang them in the dining room window.

Now that I know better, I would recommend this craft for older kids with either much less glue or a pourable resin. The glass sticks together nicely, so you could place the glass, then drizzle some glue over top, making sure that some touches each piece and the sides of the container.

This is our fourth or fifth Unplugged Project, and I've thoroughly enjoyed every one. The focused time with E, the teachable moments, and the chance to be creative myself have really been a blessing for us!