Thursday, January 15, 2015

Creativity in a Box

Your Kiwi Carte has shipped!!
 
What... oh no.... drat.
 
I was supposed to cancel that thing.
 
Drat.
 
Based on the rest of the internet, these five words send households across the  world into a fevered state of anticipation as they wait for the little green box to show up in their mailbox.  These poor children, though, have to continue to wait until their mother carefully takes a picture of the box, its contents, and blogs about it, before the children can actually rip it open and do it.  Then their neat and tidy results are carefully added to the blog.
 
Here, we just rip it open.  Then we kinda do it.  Then we leave the half-finished product lying around.
 
Which is why I was supposed to cancel it.
 
Our eldest son was showing clear signs of needing "more stimulation" and based on rave reviews everywhere, this seemed like a winner.  It was also supposed to be a good Mummy-son time, where I wouldn't constantly be saying no to my favourite toddler. 
 
So we signed up for the month-by-month subscription, just in case, because my husband thought we should be cautious.  I was ready to sign on for life "Look at all the money you save!"
 
The first box arrived, and my son was very excited.  He likes boxes in the mail.  Then he found that it didn't contain a book, and the excitement started to dial down.  "It's not from Amazon or Chapters, dear," I explained.  Then he found the pair of scissors (Kiwi gleefully says that you will need scissors in most of the crafts, so here's a pair of your own.) and started heading towards something to cut. His excitement started to dial up.  His own pair of scissors.  No one had ever suggested he have his own pair of scissors before.  And these were clearly his.  Mummy had just showed him how the box had his name on it.  
 
"NOOOOO." I shrieked.  "You can not cut the curtains!"
 
Not a good start. 
 
The first box was about dinosaurs.  First off was making yourself felt dinosaur feet and a head with pre cut-out feet and felt stickers.  I've never seen felt stickers.  They were cool.  There were triangles and circles.  The directions (all pictures to be kid-friendly) indicated that you carefully arranged these on the feet so that they matched and looked, well, organised.  My son ripped them off their backing sheet and stuck them on. 
 
"Errr, do you think this other foot might like some spots?" I asked.  "And how about we spread them out, so that the stickers aren't all on top of each other, like here, in the picture?" 
 
Blank stare. And then a vigorous head-shaking as he continued to build his sticker stack.
 
He finished sticking the stickers on.  Zero interest in putting horns on the head, or actually wearing the feet. 
 
And just like that, five minutes later, the craft was done.
 
Next up, was making imprints in clay of dinosaur bones.  This was going to be super neat.  We carefully put the stickers over top of the dinosaur outline, following the directions (phew), and got ready to put the clay over top to make the imprint.  Kiwi had warned that the clay could be very sticky, so I was prepared for it to be a little difficult.  My son was entranced with the brown clay.  I carefully made a ball and smoothed it over my dinosaur.  "See dear, if you do this, then you get the picture of the dinosaur on the back." 

He hopped down clutching his lump of brown clay and raced off to find his cooking equipment.  "Mummy, I'm making dinner!" he announced. 

I was too busy trying to pry the clay back off the dinosaur to pay attention.  "Look, a dinosaur imprint, well almost.  Let's try again.  I'll just get something to scrape this off and we..."

He came racing back with the brown clay in his saucepan, "Mummy, I cooked you waffles!"
 
Right.
 
I've come to the conclusion that the happy children online follow directions - in fact, they're happy following directions and having their craft project look like the picture.  They take time to do it "right" with the result that it takes longer than 7 minutes to "do" the whole box.  This allows their parents to feel smug about giving their children the opportunity to be creative and to feel as though it was money well spent.  This is the niche market of Kiwi Crate.
 
I, on the other hand, was left trying to jam my square peg of a son into the round hole of Kiwi instructions.  I was trying to force him to follow the instructions and "do it right", or even something approximating what I had just spent all this money on was supposed to look like. 
 
And since when had I become such an adult, that I was dead-set on following the instructions.  I mean, instructions for a child's craft that was supposed to encourage creativity, not crush it like a bug.
 
I don't even follow the instructions for Ikea. (According to my husband, it actually helps if you follow the Ikea instructions.) 
 
Oh right, when I paid $30 for something that my son declared "done" in 7 minutes.  When I vainly hoped that following the directions would make the dollar-per-second cost a little lower. 
 
When I hadn't already been notified that "Your Kiwi Crate has shipped!" when I was still vainly hoping that we might finish the previous one. And I don't mean finish like the picture.  I mean finish like we did something, anything at all, with it.
 
 
When a company wasn't sending my child dangerous weapons in the mail.  If you send scissors to a small child, you should send them to its adult in a separate envelope sealed with caution tape and a dangerous content sticker.  Anything less is just plain irresponsible.
 
Especially when you are encouraging the child to be creative.
 
 

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