Posts Tagged ‘childrens activities’

When adults want to spend quality time with kids, crafts is probably one of the most common.
Stay at home momes, preschool and kindergarten teachers, grandmas
use crafts to spend quality time and of course to commemorate holidays and seasons

As a time filling activity, crafts is one of the best, as children love to mess and glue and color and can do so for long periods of time.

There is a good reason that most adults end up having children copy other models to make their crafts projects. It is because they want the children to create something realistic and most young children are incapable of doing so at such young ages. 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
and you will not have any issues discovering loads of crafts projects for the kids to copy.

Let me tell you though, why I feel that copycat crafts can do more harm than good. 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.

Think about it:When kids follow directions without using their own thinking skills, they become robotic. I will give you an explanation why tradtional, old fashioned arts and crafts are not good for children.

It is a travesty to relegate art to the commemoration of holidays. Not only should this be an enriching experience, but the kids should be developing important skills at the same time.

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

If you’ll ask the traditionalists who do copycat crafts, what skills children gain from the activity, fine motor skills will be the answer. It may be the only answer though.

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.

Why is it then that adults tend to only get busy with crafts around holiday time.

What are the steps to take now?
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.Any problem solving to be utilized in this activity?
3.    Where’s the creativity here?
4.How successful would a child feel after creating 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