Thanksgiving Crafts Projects that Allow Children To Create their OWN projects not Copy an Adults
When children make crafts, in this case Thanksgiving crafts, its a great opportunity to give them a fun time along with vital skills.
Children that do alot of crafts projects often end up doing tradtional, copycat crafts. By doing crafts with children and following an adults model, one is doing crafts in an old, traditional manner.
Creativity is then taken away from the activity, which also takes away opportunity for thinking and also takes away any gains in self esteem that may occur/.
Doing crafts in the Educational Art way allows kids to grow by giving them the opportunity to solve problems by thinking independently, lets their creativity blossom and boosts their self esteem.
To give you an idea of how one can move away from copycat arts and crafts to Educational Arts and Crafts I am going to share with you an educational arts and crafts activity you can do with children for Thanksgiving.
(plus some links to more activities)
In my e course Learning Through Crafts I discuss the various categories that the many different activities go under.
One of the categories that I like best is called Cafeteria stye. This is arts and crafts that has an end result (as opposed to just process only art, where the art activity itself is the desired outcome) but allows children to choose how to finish it “cafeteria style”.
Children absolutely love doing cafeteria style crafts. They are not left to flounder on their own by coming up with their own ideas. They are given the basic idea, with some sort of template and then told to create with teh materials that are put out cafeteria style for them.
When kids do art and they are given lots of choices they are gaining so many vital skills.
There are then two decisions they need to make. Which materials to choose and then how to use them to make their craft.This encourages initiaitive takiing and independence.
What they need to do then is figure out how to solve problems that crop up. Do triangles fit into the space on the page or would it be better to just use lots of small rectangles.
Creativity is of course at the forefront, as they are given leeway to create, which makes their self esteem shoot up.
Allow me to share with you an activity using one category of Educational Arts and Crafts
Since Thanksgiving is a Holiday where we learn about Pilgrims and Indians it is a wonderful time of year for the children to do crafts that are Indian related.
One idea is to make objects that the Indians themselves used.
Making crafts to enhance your own Indian tribal dance would give you an opportunity to make real live Indian drums.
Step #1
Give the children an empty container large enough to use as a drum.
Empty oatmeal containers are really ideal, but any other large enough cylinder like empty coffee containers work as well.
Step #2
You can use a wide assortment of papers and materials to offer the children to cover their containers. If you are limited in materials, give as much choice as possible.
You can however,. offer them, shiny paper, wallpaper pieces, materials, tissue paper etc to completely cover the container.
MAke sure the covering is glued on well before proceeding to the next step.
Step #3
The drums should then be decorated using a whole assortment of materials you present. Pieces of ribbon, yarn, rick rack, sequins, string, feathers, pieces of leather, small cut up shapes of shiny colors all can contribute to the decoration of their drums.
Random pasting is the hallmark of most very young children, while more thoughtful deliberation is what characterizes the older kids.
Covering the tops of the drums is the final step in the drum making.
Step #4
If you still have the covers from the oatmeal container or coffee can you can use those.
If not, you will need to get some sort of heavy gauge plastic, like a heavy balloon, thick plastic or an old beach ball.
Stretch this material over the top and secure with a rubber band. (more artsy and Indain looking)
Using palms instead of sticks to make music with the drums is a good alternate method.
This is only one way of using the cafeteria style in making art with children.
If youd like you can even make creative turkeys with the kids that is an old traditional copycat crafts made anew.
You can also experiment with lots of Thanksgiving Indian clay utensils the Indians used to make to use on a daily basis.
Whatever you do make with the children just have Happy Thanksgiving and be sure to have the children be aware of how much they actually have to be grateful for.
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