I asked my son at dinner. What should we make for your teacher for Teacher Appreciation Week?
He thought about it for maybe two seconds.
"A snake," he said.
A desert snake, specifically. His class had been in a desert unit for a few weeks. Sand dunes, camels, rattlesnakes. He wanted to make one with the 3D pen and give it to her.
I asked my son if he thought his teacher would want a rattlesnake on her desk.
He considered this. Maybe not a rattlesnake. A friendlier desert snake.
We kept going. A cactus next, still desert. Then a small car, because she'd mentioned once that she liked cars. Then a teddy bear, because she had one on her shelf and he thought it might want company.
Then he said, "She told us she really likes flowers."
That was the one.
Why not just bring real ones
We've brought his teacher real flowers before. She loves them. But a 3D pen flower lasts, and you get to choose the color. He already knew she'd like blue. You can't always find the right blue at a florist.
He wanted to make something she'd keep.
The making
Before he touched the pen, he drew out the petal shapes on paper. He'd seen the project templates in our kits and wanted to do the same thing for himself. He wanted to figure out what he was building before he committed to the filament. The template he drew was very much his own. The petals were all different shapes and sizes.
The thing about making a gift for a specific person is that you think differently about it. When he makes things for himself, wonky is fine. When it was for his teacher, he redid the petals twice because they didn't look right to him. Not because I said anything. He just looked at them, decided they weren't good enough, and started again.
At one point the filament cooled unevenly on one petal and left a rough edge. He asked me if we should scrap it and start over. I said it was up to him. He held it up and looked at it for a second.
"Real petals aren't perfect either," he said, and kept it.
I wrote that down later so I wouldn't forget it.
This morning
The flower is done. The stem has a slight bend in it and one of the petals is a little thicker than the others. He wrapped it in colored paper and wrote her name on a piece of tape.
He brought it in this morning.