Paper Boxes, Paper Hearts

The lovely, old elementary school I attended

As an elementary school student, I rode the school bus to a lovely, old two-story, brick school with a belfry. Children from throughout our rural neighborhood, as well as those from within walking distance, formed the small student body in that lovely old building. 

The school stood on a lot the size of a city block. There was a big field for running, a playground for swinging, an asphalt area for jump roping or playing hopscotch, and a big sledding hill. The grounds were plentiful with trees, ideal for incorporating into our imaginative recess games or for scooping up autumn leaves to make into leaf forts or houses.

Among my favorite elementary school memories from those simpler times was the making of Valentines for our parents and the decorating of shoe boxes to hold the Valentines we would receive from our classmates. 

Valentines for our mommies and daddies were usually fashioned of red construction paper carefully traced and cut into heart shapes with little scissors. A heart-shaped paper doily would often be glued to the construction paper as the next step. Then, we would select small squares of tissue paper in various pastel hues and, using the blunt eraser end of our pencils, carefully wrap the tissue squares around the end of the pencil to form little flowers. The flowers would be glued into place with a spreader dipped into school paste. Sometimes, those little tissue flowers would form yet another heart on top of the doily. A "Happy Valentine's Day" message spelled to the best of our abilities in crayon would finish off our creations. 

Decorating a shoe box to hold the Valentines from our classmates was another enjoyable and much-anticipated classroom art project. Using wrapping paper and construction paper, along with more doilies and tissue paper flowers, we created vessels to hold those precious Valentines selected for us by our little friends. Sometimes, the Valentines would be handmade, while at other times they were purchased in a store. The handmade ones were always a favorite.

When was the last time you made a Valentine? Might this be the year to make such a gift from the heart?

Kid Crafts

While removing the last of the farmer's market red potatoes from a mesh produce bag the other night, I recalled having to take such a bag to elementary school many years ago.  We were going to make some type of craft project out of it, though the nature of the project is lost in the recesses of my mind.  On another occasion, we had to bring a cottage cheese container for a project.  Again, I don't remember what the project was, but I do remember having to bring a cottage cheese container for it.  Isn't the memory a strange thing?  Why would I, after all of these years, remember being asked to bring a mesh produce bag and a cottage cheese container to school but can't remember the projects for which I needed them?  Those projects didn't stand the test of time but a couple of them did.  Until a year or so ago, my mom still had a basket I had made of Christmas wrapping paper-covered cardboard pieces held together by red and green yarn.  I found among Mom's belongings a few other items I'd made in elementary school, items that Mom found too precious to discard, no matter how tattered they had become over four-plus decades.  In the complexity of today's world with its rapid change, it's nice to think about those simpler times every now and again, when yarn, mesh bags, cottage cheese containers and other everyday items could become something special.