Toddler Craft: An Airplane Magazine for Daddy
Thursday, August 9, 2012 at 09:40PM Ash travels a lot for work. This means I'm a pro at managing two small children who miss their Daddy, and at anticipating how much their incredibly hands-on, loving dad will miss them.
When Ash leaves for longer trips, I like to make some sort of project for him from the kids and me. I know that when he's away, we often can't communicate with him, and he treasures pictures of our family. It's also really good for Noah to feel like he's part of Ash's leaving process. Noah anticpates a change in his routine and missing Ash and sometimes his three-year-old heart and mind do not know how to express those feelings.
For an upcoming trip Ash has planned, the kids and I made a magazine for him to read on his flight and/or when he finds himself missing our family. Making the magazine gave Noah a sense of pride that he was giving Ash something special and that Daddy would be looking at his magazine every night.
We made the cover by gluing an airplane with a pictures of Noah and Maya in the windows onto a piece of construction paper. Noah helped with the cutting, painting and gluing of the cover.
The inside pages of the magazine contain a variety of our favorite family pictures, heavy on the adorable kids, and other pages that include questions I asked the kids about Ash and his travel.
At the end of the magazine, we included a message from the family wishing Daddy a safe trip.
Needless to say, Ash loved it when Noah handed it to him over dinner last night. He put it in his carry-on bag immediately and is going to wait to read it until he's up in the air!
We used the following supplies for our magazine:
An airplane shape cut out of construction paper (I cheated and used construction paper we bought from Target that had dotted lines outlining the airplane for me)
Regular construction paper (we used white for the question and answer pages and a variety of colors for the picture pages)
About 25 of our favorite 4x6 family photos
A photo safe glue stick
A hole puncher
Red and white washable glitter paint markers for the clouds and ground
Airplane themed stickers for the toddler to decorate the question and answer pages
A washable marker for the question and answers page
Red ribbon to tie the magazine together
Reader Comments (2)
This is so sweet! What an awesome craft and perfect bit of memorabilia for your family.
Hi Sol! We were just talking about how we will treasure these sorts of things when the kids are grown!