Sand Art & You Tube

Last week in a post, I featured my use of this molded figure in a rather unique way. I found it because I was in the Dollar Tree store looking for something specific for my grand daughter. 

She loves watching You Tube videos that demonstrate the toys she wants or arts & craft project she's interested in learning about. 

I was watching a video with her a couple of weekends ago and heard the host say that the craft being shown was found at a Dollar Tree store. 

Always looking for something that might interest her when she's at our house, I looked for the kit the next time I went to the Bowling Green store. Here's what I found. 

 This past Saturday, Aria and Gabriel came for a visit. James and Brandi needed some time to work on organizing their new house, so a visit to Nana & Papa's house was the order of the day. 

Over the years I've gotten to be a bit of an year round Santa Claus to my grand daughter. Just about every time she comes to spend time at our house, I have a surprise for her. It's usually some small toy. They range from a few plastic eggs of Silly Putty to a new Lego set or a My Little Pony play set. 

The last couple of times I'd given her a couple blind bags with miniature versions of characters from "Finding Dory."  

But this past Saturday, I gave her the sand art kit; telling her that it was like the one from the Dollar Store featured on the video we watched on You Tube.  Of course, she was excited about it and wanted to open it right away. Paula was busy feeding Gabriel so it was up to Papa to help her make her sand art. 

We set up at the kitchen table. She was very excited. Then I got an idea. Not only was I going to give my grand daughter a cool craft experience, I was going to video it on my phone and then download it onto my You Tube channel. 

From the moment I mentioned it she was all in. Of course, she had never been on the production side of a demo video so, I had to guide her a bit. But we made a very special 15 minute show. Here's the link so you can watch it for yourself. Papa & Aria Make Sand Art 

Because I'm used to making my Lego videos solo, I talked a little too much in this one. After watching the video back for the first time I realized that if we do any more in the future, I need to just let her take the lead as much as possible. She's the real "star". 

I really liked making this video and hope Aria buys into making more in the near future. I will get another art project or two that she might want to demonstrate just in case. 

I'm already thinking about the possibility of creating a video channel just for our videos if they are an on going thing. But then again she could never want to do it again. We're talking about a girl whose flutters from one thing to another like a bee from flower to flower.   

Her interest has switched between: Lego mini-figures, Play Doh, Silly Putty, Shopkins, My Little Pony dolls, a yo-yo, plastic snakes, her Nana's jewlery, smelling essential oils, watching videos, playing games on an I-Pad, going outside, chasing bubbles and jumping in a pile of leaves. And that was just during few hours she was visiting us this past weekend.     

But no matter what happens, this video in and of itself is a memory that I will treasure for a long time. Just the fact that my granddaughter used the word "basically" twice in the video will always make me smile.