d-9; crafts | jsc
➸ note; sorry this is late, i was working tonight!!
➸ word count; 889 words
➸ mira; aged 8, nayoung; aged 4
dadmas masterlist | nct masterlist
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ ⋆✦⋆ ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Sungchan was an extremely creative parent, in terms of coming up with activities to entertain your two young daughters with. You’d found that your two girls, Mira and Nayoung, were rather restless when their days weren’t filled up with school. So, during school holidays, weekends and bank holidays, you and Sungchan always had to improvise and research things to do. Usually this involved a lot of trips out, to parks and kid cafes and anything he thought would entertain their little minds.
This Christmas, Seoul had been plagued with heavy snowfall. Sungchan had taken them outside quite a few times, engaging them in snowman building and snowball fights, but eventually the girls became bored of this repetition and Nayoung had come down with a pretty nasty cold, which had spooked Sungchan a little bit.
‘What can we do in the house?’ He thinks aloud, ‘I want to do Christmassy things with the girls but I don’t think we can go outside too much anymore.’
You think for a few moments, ‘you could watch movies with them?’
‘I don’t think they would pay attention for that long,’ Sungchan frowns, ‘they need to be doing something.’
‘Trust us to have the most easily bored children in the world.’
’They’re just at that age,’ he sighs.
‘Maybe google some things to do,’ you suggest, ‘Google and Pinterest have never failed us.’
‘Very true,’ Sungchan pulls out his phone, opening the safari app and typing in some words.
He scrolls silently for a few minutes, reading through several articles that are mostly made up of outside trips such as viewing Christmas lights or going to markets, which Sungchan is fairly sure his daughters would find rather boring. He wades through useless articles before he finally finds one based on indoor activities.
‘Crafts?’
‘They might enjoy those,’ you say, ‘keeps their hands and mind occupied.’
‘Salt dough?’ he suddenly furrows his eyebrows, ‘they can make ornaments with it.’
‘Salt dough?’
‘Apparently you just mix flour, salt and water together. Then use cookie cutters to make shakes and they can decorate them., and then you bake them for a few hours.’
‘They can make ornaments for the tree!’ you exclaim, ‘I’ve wanted ornaments made by them for the longest time.’
‘I guess since you approve… we’ll try it out.’
—
The next day, you bring the girls home from school to find Sungchan in the kitchen, kneading a large ball of dough in a bowl.
‘Daddy!’
‘Hiya, princess, how was school?’
‘Fun,’ Nayoung bounces up and down, ‘what are you doing?’
‘We’re going to do something super fun, Nayoungie!’
‘What is it, what is it?’
‘You, me and Mira are going to make ornaments for the Christmas tree!’
‘We’re making them?’ Mira asks.
‘Yep, we’re going to cut these into shapes and you can paint, draw, and put as much glitter on as you’d like! Then we’ll put them in the oven, and they’ll go all hard. Then, when they’re all ready, we can hang them on the tree!’
The girls seem interested, hopping onto dining room chairs.
Sungchan has already covered the table with a plastic sheet, to protect it from the inevitable mess that the girls will create.
He puts the dough down on the table, patting it down so that it’s flat.
‘Right, Mira, which shape would you like?’
Mira looks at the cookie cutters for a few moments, before deciding, ‘gingerbread man.’
Sungchan takes the cutter, printing out the shape and placing it in front of Mira, who immediately takes a brown felt-tip pen to the dough.
’Nayoung?’
‘Just a circle,’ she’s swinging her feet in anticipation.
’There you are darling.’
Sungchan watches, completely enthralled with just observing his daughters. Mira colours a fairly traditional gingerbread man, colouring the whole ornament in brown, leaving white spaces for the button eyes and mouth, as well as a red bowtie. It was a little messy looking, with random white gaps and colouring outside of the lines, but it was cute nonetheless.
’That’s so good, Mira! You did so well.’
’Thank you, dada.’
‘Want to make another one?’
‘Uh… No,’ she hops down from the chair, running presumably off to her room, likely to play with her own toys.
‘Well,’ Sungchan shrugs at you, ‘I had her for half an hour at least.’
A few minutes later, Nayoung announces she’s finished with her own ornament.
‘Is that us, Nayoungie?’ Sungchan asks, being able to make out the four people she’s drawn.
‘Yeah, it’s you, mummy/mommy, me and Mira-unnie.’
‘I can see!’ Sungchan’s chest is filled with pride at his daughter’s creation, ‘your drawing is so good. I’m so proud.’
Nayoung chooses to make another ornament, deciding to make a glittery Christmas Tree, which Sungchan does most of, dipping the dough in the glitter and making sure it stuck.
‘Thank you for making these with me Nayoung, I had fun,’ Sungchan says, ruffling her hair when she gets shy, ‘we’ve got to clear this away so we can have dinner, is that okay?’
Nayoung nods, happily retreating back to playing with her toys, mind suddenly burnt out from both school and her little creativity session.
’That went down really well,’ you comment as you clear away the leftover dough and art supplies.
‘I guess we now know crafts keep them occupied for a few hours.’