Sensory Tub: FAIL

So every now and then I check in on this blog, No Time for Flash Cards, to see what kinds of creative arts and crafts I'll be able to do with Cayden when he's a little older.

And the ideas are so, so neat!  But alas, nearly every project involves glue, paint, crayons, play-doh or some other supply I'm confident Cayden would rather consume than use to express his creativity at this point.

But then I found a project the blogger swears is good for little kids, too.  One that involves basic ingredients that are either edible or too large to consume, and the entire projects can be created easily and on the cheap.  So I got excited to try our first home-made crafty kind of activity.

After all, the blogger did it two years in a row with her son -- age not identified, which turns out to be key to my misunderstanding -- so he must have been pretty little last year when she tried it for the first time, right?

Wrong.  So very, very wrong.  The Spooky Sensory Tub is not appropriate for 14.5 month old little boys.

How my husband knew that as soon as he saw my baking pan filled with black beans and orange split peas, I can't tell you, because I had every confidence this would be a productive experience for Cayden.  Yes, that darling hubby of mine washed his hands of our craft and any resulting melee as soon as he saw it.

Aw, hell, it probably was a productive experience for Cayden, as he threw beans and bats and skeletons into the air, giggling as they fell and bounced all around him.  And then when he discovered that if he violently swept his arm from one end of the pan to the other, he could bulldoze out way more beans in a few fell swoops than he could one or two handfuls at a time. 

And it was certainly a productive experience for me, as I learned that the boy is far to young to be presented with thousands of tiny little objects that make entertaining swishing and tinking noises when they crash to the floor and scatter about. 

And finally, it was a productive experience for our kitchen floor, which got a thorough sweeping and scrubbing after this.

I'm feeling quite dejected after our first homestyle craft proved such a failure. 

Seriously, how do his teachers at school get him to participate so neatly and expertly in arts and crafts, when I can't keep from eating his crayons or playing civilly with a pan of beans? 

Screw you, adorable, toddler-painted pumpkin on my front porch; arts and crafts don't count until Mama succeeds at them.