Making Traffic Lights Preschool Craft

My son and I have a routine. In the morning he has free time, he can play as he like or watch cartoons. He can color or grab a stack of books to look at. While he has free time I work. At 10 a.m. He gets his notice that we will clean the living room together when am finished cleaning the kitchen. 

Roo takes advantage of that notice and plays as hard as he can while I work in the kitchen. If it appears that he is having a especially good time I might dash in to make beds and start a load of laundry so that he can extend his fun.

When the chores have been taken care of Roo and I pick up all of the evidence of his morning fun. 

When the blankets, pillows, toys and books have been put away and the carpet has been vacuumed it is craft time. Harper likes this part of the morning because it is her chance to get on the floor and roll around.

Each week I have 2 planned crafts and I offer Roo the chance to choose the other 3 activities for the week. Last week he told me he wanted to make a "red light". 

Hmmm. That is easy peasy! Even I can manage this one without incident!

To begin the craft we got out the disposable plates I keep in our craft supplies for projects like this one, and 4 sheets of construction paper in red, yellow, green and black. I grabbed a tube of glue and we sat down to create.

I had Roo help me tear the paper into small pieces. I thought this was a good way to work on fine motor skills and develop his pencil grip.

 

Next I tore the black paper into 2 strips.

I made 3 circles of glue on each paper.

I demonstrated what I wanted Roo to do. Place the little bits of paper onto the glue. At first he wasn't sure why I wanted to keep the colors separate. 

But then he saw what we were doing! How cool! We had 2 "red lights" and he was ready to play. There was no waiting for the glue to dry!

And yes, that is a spider riding a motorcycle on the tracks!

2 "red lights" were not enough. With big blue eyes Roo begged "More Red Lights Please!" So we made another one with bits of paper on one of the plates we had used earlier.

I had a happy little boy who was very interested in daily craft time and who found inspiration in our craft to jump into a serious session of imaginative play. I felt accomplished that we had a smooth craft session, we worked on fine motor skills with a high interest creation. 

I am thinking of a better option for red lights for Roo. Maybe painting them on clothes pins so he could set them up by the train tracks. What do you think? What would you try?