Many adults cringe at the thought of craft projects for kids. Their concerns may include a lack of confidence in their creative abilities and skills, worries about what to choose for a craft project or belief that crafts are complicated and expensive. All of this is far from true. Want to know how to do an easy and stress free craft with kids? Just follow these steps. Take the time for preparation, have a craft free-for-all and don't forget the clean up. Preparation - Set Up Your Craft Cupboard. Setting up your craft supplies ahead of time will make each arts and crafts project a breeze. Purchase your supplies ahead of time. Dollar stores, lawn sales, your recycling bins, and junk drawers are among the great resources for craft supplies and …show more content…
Forget the end product and focus on the process. Sit the kids at a table with craft materials from your craft cupboard, recycling bin, junk drawers, etc. then step back and watch the magic. The creativity and flexibility in the thinking of children when they sit in front of a pile of raw materials will never ceases to amaze you. Make sure you join in the fun as well. Clean Up! I can hear the kids moaning now but clean up is essential. Taking the time to put the craft supplies back into their proper containers will make it easier to find them next time, leave more time for the actual craft project and decrease stress for both the children and adults. Plan the time for clean up into your craft project. If you have thirty minutes for your crafting time, quit with five minutes left for clean up. Setting a timer will assure everyone knows when clean up begins. Give each child specific task to make the clean-up less overwhelming. Giving specific directions will make the task less daunting to the child. Use instructions such as, "Your job is to put all of the paints into the paint container," or "Your first job will be to collect all of the loose beads and put them into the bag." Allowing the child to escape this part of the craft project will fail to teach them to clean up after themselves and create resentment in those who have to do the
Many children do not want to help with chores. The children would rather put it off until the following day, or find a way out of them. If you put back your chores, then you will do the same when you too are a full adult yourself, and you might get confused or never want to help with them. This is why you need to accomplish them young and get in the habit of it so it would be simple in the future. It will also help prepare them for adulthood by helping with responsibility, become an independent adult and have a higher self esteem as the researchers
The ‘potion’ that the kids made at the Dorr Museum was an open ended project, we gave the kids instructions for how to get the activity started, but the end result was completely in their hands. They had the choice to pick from several different objects with fragrances to include in their project, which fragrances and how much of each fragrance they wanted was up to them. Similarly, at the Discovery Museum, the kids were making insect headbands, I would get them started on the headband part, but what they added to the band was all up to them. Most
This activity was easy for me because the children love to play in the block area. The only problem was that the children were not familiar with the new blocks, so I asked Shelly about the name of the blocks and she said, “those block are slot blocks” I explained on the circle time how to use them and I encourage to build a house or barn for their farm animas. I put some picture of cows, chickens, pigs, and horse on the block area wall. I bought plastic farm animals and green, blue felt fabric, so the children use it as a green grass and blue water for the farm animals. The children were engaged with this activity. Geo, Robbie, Tommy were playing together with the block and Chloe built a little building for the animals by herself and she
You can make puzzles for them by drawing a picture on corrugated cardboard, and using a craft knife to cut the pieces. If you are really ambitious, several boxes can be kept in their original shape, and joined to several other boxes with glue. Cut holes in each of the boxes to create a fun tunnel network, especially fun for toddlers.
Toilet rolls: I will encourage children to use empty toilet rolls or small plastic juice bottles to make a family. Draw on faces, stick on paper clothes, and use cotton wool for hair. Children could use these new toys to make up stories.
Crafts should be easy to do and understand for any level of learner. Why not focus on a popular and well loved series of Pokemon? Felt is an easy to work with and is readily available material that any age group can use. My project will provide a free sewing template and even a tutorial video on how to make a Pokemon plush craft out of felt. The benefit to me is a gain editing, filming, marketing, and sewing skills. Viewers will have the ability to pause their "online sewing class" and work on a craft as they follow along in the video.
Ask the children to create a Recycled trash can by using these materials. The children may color the box, paste the pictures, write a sentence about the importance of recycling, and list the trash that should be in the Recycle trash can. After the groups finish their work, put one of the Recycle trash cans in the classroom and share the other in other classrooms.
References: Mayesky, M. (2012). Creative activities for young children, 10th Edition. United States: Wadsworth Cengage Learning
During Project Art, the teacher makes one, she shows the children how to make one, and all the children end up making the same art project. There is nothing wrong with this, especially when we think about what this is actually teaching children. Product Art teaches children how to follow directions, tunes fine motor skills, and helps them learn to cooperate with each other in a large
Creative play for a child is important. A child needs to express who they are, and be able to choose what character they want to be while they play in their living room fort. They are able to bring out their creativity and be themselves. Being able to be creative while you are a child opens doors to a creative adulthood.
My partner and I had a lot of fun with the sensory activity that we planned and it went very well. The kids at KITE also really enjoyed it. We had several sensory bins with different colors and textures, and then allowed the kids to make their own bag with objects hidden in it to take home. One of our sensory bins was filled with black sand mixed with glitter and it seemed to be the favorite for most of the participants. A key concept that was reinforced through the experience of running our station was the importance of grading an activity up or down to create the “just right challenge.” We made sure to have several options available to increase or decrease the difficulty of making their own sensory bag so they would be engaged during the
Other parents spend way too much money than they should for their kids projects. Building a boat from scratch is not easy and can take time. What other skills this particular project brings out time management and organizational skills. Students have a week to complete this assessment and have to see how much time they should put into this every day. This is when organization comes to play, because organizing time is also time management. More organization come in when doing it with information for the boat. The kid would have to see what parts he/she will be doing and find that info in the book. If the creator is not organized this can go from yay to nay in just a few seconds. Another skills projects can bring out or improve is following a rubric or instructions, if a student can do that then they know exactly what to do. If the learner has trouble reading a rubric, then the grade will not be so good and that would be a learning lesson for him or her. Of course, tests and essays bring out some skills, but project-based tests are an element that can have endless results. This type of trial is the best way to obtain the best out of
You can also include elements from around the classroom, like tables, chairs, yardsticks, string, etc. To make the project more interesting, I sometimes acquire refrigerator-sized cardboard boxes and duct tape them to the floor of the classroom. Turn your class into an amusement park!
In this photo, the children are gathered around the table so they can begin working on a painting project as a group. Some of the children are wearing aprons, so their dress up clothes will not get dirty. Each child has been provided with a letter and they were informed to paint it in whichever way they choose. They were supplied with 1 paint brush, and the paints and water buckets have been strategically placed on each side of the table for easy access. They have a very determined look on their faces and are very focused on the task. They are enjoying the activity, however, the materials that are offered are not open ended, which will not allow them much freedom to express their own creativity.
For learning centers today we painted pumpkins for a pre-writing activity. While we were painting some of the students experimented with the paint and water, to see what different colors they could get. We did a letter recognition and pre-writing activity with a hole punch and a paper pumpkin. We had to search for all the letter p's and hole punch them. Once we finished hole punching, we did a fine motor activity by stringing the yarn through the holes. For our sensory activity we played with water beads and squishy eyeballs. We also used Levi's to