Klutz

Last year, Sophie learned how to fold "cootie catchers" (or, "fortune tellers" as they called them back in my day) from her friends at school. She enjoyed making dozens of them from plain white paper until one day last summer when my friend surprised us with The Klutz Book of Cootie Catchers!

It had 20 or 30 tear out pages that could be folded into full color cootie catchers with all kinds of different themes. What a riot Sophie had with that.

We have since found several Klutz books that have brought joy and creativity into our home. For Ian's last birthday, he received the Klutz Book of Paper Airplanes.

Ian has loved folding paper airplanes since he was three (in fact, it was a nice source of entertainment for us while living in China). But, try as we might, we had only one main model with slight variations from time to time. Nothing too interesting, until this book came along providing illustrated step-by-step instructions for 10 different planes. It also came with 50 sheets of paper in fun designs.

Ian has had lots of fun with this book over the past few months. And, Saturday, after Karen's Cafe, we were having kind of a lazy day. He asked me to fold some airplanes with him. It turned into a great afternoon as we created the Flying Ninja -- that turns corkscrew tricks as it soars through the air, and the Pteroplane -- that does a wide backwards loop-de-loop. I am loving these books!