Beavers - then & now

3 years ago we made this same Beaver puppet.  Lachlan was 4 and Peter was 2.  Today they are 7, 5 and Adam is 2, the same age as Peter from my post 3 years ago. 

Since Lachlan is now 7 and craves time as "the boss", I told him he could be the teacher for this project.  I sat closely by to help, but I had Lachlan pop out the beaver pieces and hand out supplies to his brothers. 

Getting a glue stick ready for baby brother.  Soon after this he started putting together baby brother's beaver.  I had to encourage him to let Adam do it on his own.

 Here Lachlan is drawing a face on his beaver puppet when he was 4.

 It looks like, even when he was 4, he was helping out those in need. 

Sleepy 2 year old Peter.

4 year old Lachlan finishes up his beaver puppet with drawing details on it's tail. 

7 year old Lachlan is hard at work putting a criss-cross pattern on his tail.  It's neat to see that when his knowledge of beavers expands, so does the detail on his puppet.  Not only that but his ability to know what he wants to do and carry it out has drastically improved.  Which has caused so much less frustration for my little perfectionist.  I don't say that in a condescending way, he really likes to get things just right, and if he doesn't he gets really upset.  I think these characteristics that may bring challenges now were instilled in him by his creator and will serve him well as an adult.  We just have to work on fine tuning or refining the edges. 

Next up is Peter with a little then (2) and now (5) comparison. 

A little pre-writing practice going on here with some scribbles. 
Peter looks quite concerned about that thing on his arm.

 Now he is holding it out for me to see.  Proud Peter.

 I have no idea what he is doing here, but his face is just priceless.
Now Peter can do pretty much everything on his own.  He has had a lot of fine motor training for many years.  He can prepare the glue stick and do all the gluing. 

He also paid close attention to the detail of the beaver tail by drawing the criss-cross pattern on both the front and back of the tail. 

 Peter, now 5, is always good for a picture!

Of course we have to finish up with Adam, who is 2.  I definitely can see some similarities between 2 year old Peter and 2 year old Adam, like the pre-writing scribbles.

I have to say this is not quite the post I dreamed of when comparing the two years side by side.  But alas, real life happens.  Our dishwasher leaked and we discovered the leak last week.  Since then we have had teams of people coming in to tare our house apart.  Mostly my kitchen, but the parts from the torn out kitchen were put in my dining room/classroom/office area.  It has been an interesting ride.  Since we just learned that it will be at least a couple of weeks until we get our kitchen back, I decided to set up shop in my bedroom, to see if I could get a little work done and have a small sense of normalcy. 

Not sure if this will work, but it's worth a shot. 
Oh, and have you ever done dishes in the bathroom?  With a 2 year old "helping"?