Mister Maker

Mister Maker is a brilliant British arts and crafts TV show for the preschool set. We saw part of one episode when we were in England and then stumbled across it again here. Dubbed in German, it's on at 8:00 AM on Saturdays and Sundays, an energetic male host presents at least four arts and crafts projects, and a handful of animated shorts are mixed in to liven things up a bit, in a 20-minute-commercial-free whirlwind of paint and scissors and good fun. It has quickly become a favorite must-watch for Nikolas and Peter, a somewhat exclusive male bonding experience, or something.

This morning Nikolas woke up just before 8:00 after a very wakeful night (is the moon full again??). As the opening tune of Mister Maker began, he dragged Peter out of bed (who quickly got up so as not to miss a single moment of arts and crafts magic). Then they sat on the couch together drinking coffee and taking notes on what the best, most exciting project(s) for today would be, with Nikolas bouncing and shrieking in glee with the presentation of each new project.

As it turns out, it was a most exciting morning. There was the painted box house project with a popsicle stick roof that we were lacking the popsicle sticks for...but maybe if we collected real sticks we could use them instead thought Nikolas. There was the two-stone dog face that we were lacking stones for...but we could collect stones over by Spar thought Nikolas. There was the torn paper landscape mosaic that we had all the supplies for...but it's not messy enough thought Nikolas. And then there was the project of all projects that we had all the supplies for and was messy enough and active enough to be the big winner: sponge splatter painting.

All you need is some paper, paint (which you thin down with water in equal proportions), pieces of sponge, and a pancake flipper(s) or large wooden spoon or both for better painting technique. It was uproarious fun, with pancake flippers splatting and sponges squirting. The more you move the sponges around, the more spectacular your piece of art becomes as you can see below. If we had larger paper, we could have made an enormous painting just like Mister Maker, but we'll save that for another day. We had enough fun with what we had!