Do You Need Crafts?
I love ready crafty homeschooling blogs. I do. I giggle at the thought of painting on rocks or cutting up styrophome cups to do fun craft projects. But to be honest, I’m just not that crafty.
I’m great with the typical handicrafts: knitting, sewing, water painting, etc… I like crafts that serve a purpose, that can be useful. But cutting shapes out of construction paper and gluing them onto another sheet of paper just doesn’t do anything for me. Of course then I feel guilty for not doing more crafts like I think I should be so I try to fit more in. Afterwards I’m left staring at a pile of paper snowflakes and wondering just how much he got out of it, and how much paper was wasted. I guess this makes it confession time, I don’t like doing the typical paper and glue crafts.
Theresa at LaPaz Home Learning asked what if she just didn’t do the crafts anymore? In fact she has a nice list of pros and cons about skipping the typical cutting and gluing that we are all so familiar with. What would really happen if you just said no to busywork crafts?
I think everyone has to find their happy balance and decide when is it educational and when is it just busy work. When does it serve a purpose and when is it just waste? And this is coming from the scrapbook addict, so “serve a purpose” is up to interpretation.
crafts, homeschooling, education, busy work, paper
February 8th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
First, let me admit that I am a crafty person. Maybe my crafts are not beautiful, but I love doing stuff with paper and glue and little bits of shiny stuff.
But here is what I think is important - It is not the materials themselves, but what you do with them. Or more importantly, what you don’t do with them. The reason I stopped taking my son to library story time is that they always had some sort of idiotic simplistic craft, and it just seemed like filler. My son didn’t get much out of it. Something like a photocopied snowman and some cotton balls to glue onto it for snow. Woopee. My son was very rarely interested.
But that was also before I learned about unschooling. Student-driven learning is key here. Why would my son have this great interest in this very prescribed craft project that *someone else* dreamed up for him? It wasn’t the snowman, glue, and cotton balls that were the problem. So many of the craft projects that I see homeschoolers doing basically mirror that library story time that I talked of.
In our house we have millions of craft supplies. Cotton balls, glitter, paper, glue, tempera, watercolors, buttons, foam, etc. But I try not to pick some sort of craft project and tell my kids to do it. I let them come up with their own projects, and they dream up some fun crafts. Or I get an idea for my own crafty artwork someday, and they learn from me or come up with their own ideas. The key is to let creativity reign and not try to replicate the tidy little lessons that they do in school. That’s why we homeschool, right?
February 9th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Ditto that, Summer. I let the kids play around with crafty stuff, and they come up with all sorts of weird contraptions, but they mostly like to make things they can use. I assume they get that attitude from me- I can’t stand knick-knacks that just sit there, waiting to be dusted. My decorating scheme is Rustic Library. :p
We have always had birdhouses and love watching them every spring, but now we are getting together the stuff to make plexiglass-backed window mounted birdhouses. How cool is that? The kids are SO excited to watch what bird families come to see us this spring.
February 9th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Great post - I think so much depends on the person. My kids love to do just about any kind of craft. I don’t actually enjoy all the mess and cutting out that is often involved, so we don’t always do tons of crafts. But, when we do the kids love it. If we do too many crafty type things in a row, though, they get a little bored with it. So I agree that balance is key!
Mostly mine do self-directed projects with all the supplies we have lying around, and that makes all of us happy. Each year it seems that they are able to work more and more independently, to come up with their own original ideas. Sometimes, though, they really enjoy following instructions and doing something step by step, by the book.
Either way, I then have to figure out what to do with all the masterpieces!
February 10th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
I like crafty things like scrapbooking and notebooking, but my kids are not so into it. We do crafts and notebooking only occasionally. I enjoy crafty blogs though; it’s fun to live vicariously.
February 10th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
I have to say I LOVE crafts. As a child I never took art and I still can’t draw a stick figure to save my life but since my oldest was able to hold a paint brush I allowed him to do so. I have every imaginable craft material in my house and use something on a daily basis. Not because I require it but because my children love it. You see I have seen so many great things come from crafts and craft time. All my children have had great fine motor skills early on and I attribute it to the crafts. My son is 9 now and we are working on the solar system, by using plaster of paris and making a 3D replica of the solar system and hanging it from the ceiling he can visualize all the random fact that are in the books. I found that for him the information he retains quite often is something we have done a craft with. Maybe it’s from the hands on approach of creating it or maybe it’s from the visualization or maybe it’s from the one on one connection we have doing it. Whatever the reason I have found crafts to be a vital part of our home. Have fun with it. That is the key really. Just get into it with your child forget the mess, forget the purpose or maybe pick something that ties into what you are teaching and maybe that will give you that neeeded purpose and spark your creativity and theirs. Art is an entry into someones soul. So have fun and enjoy.
February 29th, 2008 at 6:27 am
[...] way to get into the stories. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been giving thought to whether the typical paper crafts are needed. So I love that the crafts suggested in this book for each story aren’t the busywork style of [...]
February 29th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
[...] crafts, home school, teaching Summer from Mom Is Teaching posted an interesting discussion about crafts. As a former public school art teacher with a BFA degree, this really struck a cord with me. [...]