One of my favorite parts about raising children has been introducing them to all sorts of new things, and when something catches their interest, facilitating them in their pursuits and watching them discover things about themselves and the world around them. Makes parenthood sound pretty good, doesn't it!?
The children are now aged 11 to 16. Somewhere in the early teen years they seem to lose some of that old fascination with discovery. Or maybe it just isn't "cool" to be passionate about anything when you have teen peers. The youngest, however, still has an enthusiasm for building robots. When he was really young, he would go through the kitchen "junk drawer" for screws, clips, batteries and wires and then use scotch tape to make little robots. Lego Bionicles toys and their mechanical-looking interlocking parts have been great.
The other evening, i was showing my robot child how fun it was to look at things on etsy. We typed the tag "robot" into the search bar and found today's highlighted etsy artist: ReClaim2Fame (click on the photos to go directly to this etsy shop).
My son's eyes lit up, he bumped me off the computer chair, and he must have looked at every one of ReClaim2Fame's pieces! He was very enthusiastic. And hopefully you can share some of his joy: these sculptures have so much character, even the simpler ones. Son and i have been looking around the house for possible parts and we've been discussing options for how to connect bits. He points out that a bottle cap would work great as an eye because the jaggedy outline looks kind of like eyelashes on a surprised eye. The top part of an aluminum drink can looked like a good basis for a face. And he's off!
It just warms my heart to see the creative lightbulb go off in a kid's head. But there may be some dumpster diving in my future... Oh well, anything for art's sake.
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