Meet Mr Avocado. This cheery character is fairly simple to make yet on this occasion with our hot glue gun out of action it proved much more challenging. However the little girl that made him had a vision, and it was her determination that brought him to life.
Had the glue gun been available it would have been easy. Simply cut out the bits, colour them in and glue them together. Hey presto, you have a new best friend.
Life's not always as simple as you want it to be, sometimes it puts obstacles in your way and you have to find another solution. Together the little girl and I began thinking of solutions to our no glue gun problem.
We tried Pritt Stick but that was a sticky mess and Mr Avocado fell apart.
We tried adding extra hidden supports inside his body but sadly that didn't help either
We tried using brown tape on the inside to hold the sides in place, which was okay, but not great.
Eventually we found a different type of brown tape and added it to the outside edge. Success at last! Perhaps it was a combination of all our attempts that finally held Mr Avocado together.
All that trial and error.
All that failure.
All that learning!
The ease of the glue gun would have taken all those learning opportunities away.
It's a tool we tend to take for granted in the Cardboard Shed. It's easy to use and pretty much sticks most things together in a jiffy. It's great when things are easy but that ease doesn't always help us to grow as learners. Resilience and personal growth comes from being able to stretch ourselves and work just beyond our comfort zone. When we feel safe and supported we can do things that we originally didn't think were possible.
Mr Avocado turned out to be a great reminder that easy isn't always best.
Before she left the Cardboard Shed the same little girl went on to create a cardboard toaster.
She was unsure at first, she knew what she wanted it to look like but she didn't know how to make it work. She felt it was too hard, I sensed she felt it was beyond her current capabilities
Once l reminded her that Mr Avocado was proof she could do hard things, she was off. A smile spread across her face and all I had to do was watch and admire her bravery to give it a go.
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