Process not Product

I wasn't going to blog about this activity because well...you will find out by the end of this post but i think the reason why i love doing what i do is reminded to me when we did this activity and id love to share it with you...
We had this frangipani mirror from my teenage years stored in our shed and i had been thinking of what i could use it for. Tara has been very excited about her dress ups lately so i thought id let her decorate a mirror to go in her dress up area of our work room. We started by using a chisel and hammer to remove the frangipani's and saved them for another activity prop.

We covered the mirror with paper so the paint wouldn't get on the mirror and Tara mastered the sticky tape all by herself. Using tape to hold down the paper and also making lines over the frame to pull off later to form a pattern

Then we chose some bright colours to brush,roll and dab all over the frame

Tara asked for sparkles as well so she finished it off with some glittery paint and it dried in the sun until.....the wind came up and it fell,smashing the mirror into pieces :(

I think i was more upset than Tara. We had spent all morning preparing and all afternoon painting.Trying to be environmental and reuse instead of purchase and yet it all amounted to nothing. It took me a few minutes to realise that not only had i enjoyed a glorious day with my daughter, making memories and sharing a special mother daughter bond, she had also mastered a new skill of sticky taping alone and we shared the disappointment of things not always being the way that we want them to be and as the Montessori method teaches the importance is on the process not the product!