Sequin Ribbon

Three ways to make Thanksgiving Crafts a Creative Experience

Private time with your children and crafts for Thanksgiviing; the perfect match. At the same time you will be giving them some fun, enriching art activities,.

Children that end up being given alot of crafts, most often end up with what I call “copycat crafts”. Crafts projects are often tradtional and encourage copying a model of an adults.

As such creativity is removed from the activity which in turn removes possibilites for thinking, problem solving skills and developing a good self esteem.

By doing Educational Arts and Crafts the children are having lots of their skills worked on. Problem solving, creativity and self esteem are some some of the many benefits.

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.

Cafeteria style is definitley the most fun category. 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”.

How cafeteria style crafts works is quite simple. The adult does decide on the basic template of the project but allows the child to choose from many materials to decorate the project as he or she sees fit.

It is so important to allow choices in arts and crafts as its not just good practice but gives so many good skills for kids.

With an array of materials to choose from the children choose which materials they want and then make the decision how to use those materials.This encourages initiaitive takiing and independence.

Figuring out solutions to problems that come is the next step. Is it better to use one long piece of ribbon accross the top of the project, or is it better to use many small cut up pieces instead.

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.

As Indians have lots of tribal gatherings with lots of pow wows, a wonderful instrument that can be made to be used by the children for their own tribal dances would be Indian drums.

Step #1

The kids would need cylinder containers to use for the drum and you may want to ask around to see who may have extras.

Empty oatmeal containers are really ideal, but any other large enough cylinder like empty coffee containers work as well.

Step #2

Offer the children a choice of different materials to cover the container. In the likelihood that you don’t have many covering choices at least try to add lots of color choices.

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

Even though you should allow for lots of choice in presenting materials to decorate with, don’t overwhelm the children. 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.

Younger children don’t pay much attention to how they are decorating their projects while older children put alot of thought into the process.

Of course once the drums are done, you must decide how you will cover them.

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. (adds a touch of home made, Indian quality to it)

To use the drums the kids can use any type of sticks to bang to make their music.

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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