Every so often, I do a project or an activity and halfway through I think, "what the hell was I thinking??!!?" I had one of those moments yesterday. Since my family and I will be gone later next week, we're working on Mother's Day gifts at daycare this week. I ordered mini wind chimes from Oriental Trading, thinking, 'these are adorable! This will be perfect!" I didn't once think about how freaking HARD it would be for the kids to paint these damn chimes!
The directions on the chimes: ages 3+. Do not paint string or chimes themselves.
I thought we had it. I really did. But we quickly realized there was no way to paint these successfully without getting paint on the strings and chimes. It mostly just meant I spent my morning repeating, "stop touching the silver part with paint on your hands." "Don't wrap the string around your finger to make it curly." "Do not swing your chime with wet paint all over it please." I needed a drink after that craft!
Luckily, the chimes still seem to work, despite being covered in paint. Next year, I'll go with the cutesy hand print whatever or a bottle of wine before attempting to paint wind chimes with toddlers and preschoolers.