Posts Tagged ‘art’

Christmas Ornament Crafts

Christmas is a holiday where all kinds of kids crafts are created at home and in the school environment.

Crafts for kids, however should be an activity that should bring fun and excitement to children’s activities aside from adding a bonding to the adults that are doing the projects with them.

Educational arts and crafts is a way of doing crafts with children where they are not blindly copying the adults model but are creating things that they are capable of creating at their own developmental level.

When children create at their own level a number of things occur.

It creates a great feeling about themselves, as who can feel good about crafts projects that are copycat models of someone else’s. Kids really know when a craft was done by them or not and when it was done by them, their self esteem soars.

Creativity is another great advantage educational arts and crafts has over other forms of arts and crafts.
When an adult does a project and wants a child to copy it, it's the perfect way to repress creativity.

Under the banner of educational art are between 4-6 types of activites.
There is the cafeteria style that allows children to choose materials to work with, there is process only art where the process is what counts along with a few more.

The point of it is that all of the crafts under educational arts and crafts should be age appropriate, and allow for freedom of creation and expression.

Explained below are two simple and inexpensive Christmas crafts activities that you can make from items around your home.

The first one uses plastic throwaway cups:

The children will now love to color their cups using only permanent markers that work on plastic. Cheering the kids on to fill in lots of empty space on the cups with the markers will make them prettier.

When they are done, take a cookie sheet and put the cups upside down on it and put in the over at around 350 degrees. Allow them to stay in for a few minutes as they melt. If you don't watch carefully, there is a chance that they can burn all the way to the edges. As the cookie trays and cups get very hot, do not allow the kids near them until they cool down.

When they are cool, make a hole in the center and use colorful ribbon to hang as an ornament for your tree.

Another item that is easy to find in the home will be the next activity and uses old or discarded cd's.

In anutshell: Have the children add all sorts of decorative touches and them hang them with string.

There are tons of ways of enhancing the cd's.

You can color with permanent markers, glue and glitter them, collage over them, decoupage over them, and decorate them with whatever shiny, decorative materials you can find.
Once they are done, get some pretty ribbon and hang them from your tree.

If you want to see what a crafts acitivity done in the cafeteria style is like then check out this Hanukkah Crafts collage

If you are reading this article, chances are you have a creative soul and love to let your immagination soar - because - why else would you be visiting a site aimed at crafts, hobbies and other such creative pursuits? You may well be  talented and artistic - but have your children inherited your creativeness and resourcefullness? And if they haven't - are there ways you can stimulate an interest in them? Here are a few tips as to what you can do...

Encourage the creativity in your children by providing them with the time, resurces and the space for making art. Try to set aside interruption-free time for drawing, in a mess-proof zone - so that their creativity can run wild. Ensure that you cover all surfaces so that any splashes of paint or scribbles of crayon are 'caught' - because nothing squishes creativity more so than a parent saying "Don't make a mess" every 2 minutes.

Choose the right drawing materials too as this is very  important. Many craft materials can be improvised, but when drawing tools and paper are required, opt for a small selection of good quality age-appropriate products, rather than loads of inferior products. Be sure to check safety information and follow instructions. During any 'art-time' children should always be surpervised because many necessary materials - such as crayons - pose a choking hazard.

Surroundings: As with writing or working at a computer, good posture and a comfortable position are important for drawing. With young children, a child-size table and chair is actually preferable to an easel. If the chair is a little high, provide a phone book as a footrest. A coffee table and a cheap plastic chair work well. A small kitchen storage trolley is a perfect solution for containing supplies, or if space does not allow, a portable fishing tackle or tool box is a good option too. Untidy toddlers may need a drop-cloth and supervision to avoid ink-stained walls, as even 'washable' pens often don't deliver on that promise!

Art Materials: Avoid cheap markers, too-hard pencils and thin paints - these types of materials are discouraging to the child and therefore  a waste of money. Provide many sheets of blank paper to inspire their crativity and occasionally invest in a canvas so that your child can paint something and chances are you'll want to hang it on your wall!  Provide also coloring books or coloring pages which are bountiful online - coloring pages are not so great for creativity, however they do provide children with the  chance to practice their fine motor skills and sometimes it's very relaxing and just what they need to simply color in without the 'pressure' of thinking about WHAT to draw. 

For example little girls may enjoy coloring images of Barbie and at sites like Barbie Coloring Pages you’ll find the best Barbie pictures to color

When it comes to drawing and coloring, at each age/stage of your child's life provide....

Toddlers

• Child-safe markers and wipe-off boards
• Chalk boards and safe chalk
• Plain paper and coloring pages

Juniors

• Sketchbook
• Student colored pencils
• Washable Markers
• Oil pastels
• Plain paper and coloring pages

Middle School

• Sketchbook  or scrapbook
• Graphite Pencils
• Watercolor sketch paper
• Watercolor pencils
• Marker pens, marker paper
• Plain paper and coloring pages

High School

• Sketchbook  or scrapbook
• Quality drawing papers and boards
• Graphite Pencils
• Artists' quality colored pencils
• Illustration markers, marker paper
• Pastel paper and hard pastels if liked
• Plain paper and canvases to work on

All ages

• Safe sharpeners, erasers, dusters, stencils and rulers
• A  folder for storing large pieces
• Storage boxes for smaller pieces
• Consider photographing or scanning pieces for a permanent record.

Kids crafts are one of the most common activities that adults do with children.
Moms, Dads, preschool and nursery school teachers, doting grandmas and aunts
make crafts with their kids as a way of spending quality time together often based around holidays

Everyone knows that kids love to color and paint and since it is really hard to get many children to concentrate for long periods of time on any activity, crafts is the perfect  way to fill that time.

The big problem here is that adults want a realistic looking project. Young children, however, are usually not ready to create their own realistic projects, so impatient adults create them and have the children copy them. I call this “copycat crafts”.

If you are a real traditional sort and have no problem with creating robots out of your children then go right ahead and keep doing these kinds of crafts. There are tons of them to be found, especially all over the web
if so it will be a cinch to find tons of tradtional crafts projects to do with kids.

Crafts that are copycat are very detrimental to kids and you should take a minute to hear why. You can also go download a free report  that will help you with all kid crafts by explaining to you in detail the pros and cons of copycat crafts and educational crafts.

So how is it that crafts can make kids into robots? By not allowing them to solve any of their own problems when doing crafts. Once I explain it, you will understand why it is that tradtional arts and crafts are so wrong for children.

Arts and crafts should not only be used to remember the holidays. It should definitely be a wonderful, enriching expereince for the kids and at the same time they should be gaining skills as well.

When working with crafts in an educational format, kids learn thinking skills plus develop greater initiative and self esteem.

Many art proponents tout the fine motor skills children are gaining by doing arts and crafts, that however, is all that they are probably getting in copycat crafts.

I have a great post for you that gives a great example of creativity in art by showing you how children can make a crafts activity of flowers using both methods.

There are so many art opportunities during the year but, many adults only stick to holiday time.

And now what do we do?
If you like the idea of adding more creativity to kids crafts you can check out  Educational arts and crafts which will give you lots of crafts for kids to do that are truly educational.

If you want to try doing educational crafts on your own, however, and not copycat crafts  then there 4 points  to keep in mind when choosing a crafts for your children.

1.    Does this activity allow for any problem solving?
2.Is there any thought that can be put into this project?
3.    Where’s the creativity here?
4.    Will my child feel good about him/herself after doing this craft?

If you keep these thoughts in mind when choosing crafts then not only will you be commemorating the holidays and spending quality time with your children but they also will be gaining vital skills

The simple acts of drawing and coloring are literally childs' play, however, both of these past-times play an important role in your child's physical, emotional and cognitive development. Like no other activity, the hobby of drawing and coloring allows young children to express themselves and their emotions, experience autonomy and build their confidence.

Parents and caregivers can promote drawing and coloring as a way to improve physical, social, emotional and cognitive development-and to have a lot of fun along the way too. Here are some suggestions:

1. Provide your grankids with nontoxic materials, blank sheets of white paper and coloring pages.

2. Model drawing by example. Show children that you like to draw and color too - make designs but do not show your children what they should draw.

3.Encourage all drawing and coloring activity and efforts by talking about the beautiful colors, the lines and shapes the child has made.

4. Rather than ask "What is it?," say "Tell me about your drawing". Asking "What is it?" suggests to the child that s/he has failed to depict what they intended.

5. Talk about issues such as thin or thick, or the concept of wide, narrow, dark, light, edge, shape, contour, etc.

6. Display their art on the kitchen fridge, in their room and in places where visitors to your home will see them. Point them out to visitors, friends and relatives - the praise fthey will receive for the work will boost a child's self esteeem and confidence.

7.Give kids the freedom to choose the subjects of their drawings and the types of coloring sheets they would like. Some argue that coloring sheets do little to foster children's creativity - however they play a pivotal role in developing a child's fine motor skills - a pre-cursor to writing - and often encourage children who wouldn't otherwise draw and color to pick up a crayon to color in their favourite character. For example little girls may enjoy coloring images of fairytale princesses while boys enjoy coloring images of favourite characters such as Pokemon or Spongebob Squarepants and at sites like Spongebob Coloring Pages you’ll find many Spongebob printables Always supervise younger children while they draw and color - because crayons pose a choking hazard.