Since I've upped the level of crafting from recycled materials, my kids have really been enthusiastic about two things.  1)  We can recycle everyting! 2) Everything can be a project!  It's just what I was hoping for.  During Halloween, we had the Friendly Bats hanging from the lights in our kitchen from threads, and knowing that Halloween decorations had to go away, my daughter started thinking about her next project.  "If we hang something else from there, we'd be recycling the string!" she said.  Eyeing up a yogurt container like the one she used for the bats, she commented, "We could make reindeer--this will be the body, and we need a different container for the head, and we can attach strips of paper for the legs!"

Now, every scrap of paper, nearly every piece of trash is something that can be used for a project, according to my 5-year old.  And we've always done crafts, and we've been talking about recycling (and doing it) for quite a while.  But I think it was really the yogurt container bat project that sparked her appreciation for trash.

That's an example of the importance of introducing your kids to different materials.  You never know what project, however silly it might seem, will open their eyes.  You never know what will really get their creative juices flowing.

So go forth and make projects from trash.  Even if you don't end up with the next Robert Rauschenberg, maybe you'll end up with the greenest kid on the block.

My daughter's kindergarten class has been having color days--wear red on Monday, orange on Tuesday, and so on.  She hasn't given me a lot of information about what their lessons look like on each of those color days (I know they ate Cheez-its for snack on orange day) but I'm sure it's all tied together.

It's just interesting that a simple thing like designating a special color to a particular day can get the kids thinking.  I think colors have always played a big role in my kids' lives, but now that they have color days, I hear things like "Hey, my shoes are purple!" "Hey, we should bring this snack in for yellow day!" It's so exciting to draw connections and to notice things in a new way.

So that's the simple idea for injecting artistic thinking into your child's day--designate a color day, or a shape day, even a pattern day.  Tell them it's Stripes Day and see what they find in their rooms, in your house, or on the way to school that has stripes, or whatever theme you choose.  Maybe they'll get excited about it and pass it on to their classmates and friends.  Who knows. 

For the record, this is truly a no-mess art lesson. (Unless of course, your kids go through their drawers looking for clothes of a certain color.  I can't be held responsible for that.)

I'm not a big fan of listening to Christmas music on the radio when I haven't even had enough time since Halloween to get the pumpkins out of my yard.  Or brushing past the Christmas decorations at Kohl's when it's still 70 degrees outside (even if that was an unusually warm day for this time of year.)  But it seems that it's time to get ready for the holidays, and The Craft Playground wouldn't want you to start planning without some good kid-crafts.

I hope you enjoy The New Gift Wrap ideas.  We've been looking for ways to cut down on wrapping paper (for environmental reasons) and those gift bags (because of the expense), without taking the fun or beauty out of gift giving.  I hope you like our gift bags made from recycled boxes.  And our eco-friendly snow bow will let you top your gifts with something that is not only free, but recycled.  And you can do all this with kids.

Please also enjoy the fun craft ideas including Balloon Ornaments and Snow Globes.  I'll be adding more ideas soon.  I hope this is enough to get you started.

Have a crafty holiday season!

For anyone who thinks that ats & crafts projects have to be complicated, let me tell you this is not true. Kids can be very creative if you give them the materials.

My daughter's teacher recently asked for coffee filters for a class project.  I happen to have a cabinet full of coffee filters I don't need.  (A broken coffee maker, a replacement that didn't make hot coffee, and a second replacement that came with one of those lifetime filters, and I have 2 kinds of filters in packs of 200 each.)  So, as soon as I got them out of the cabinet, my kids were interested. (The introduction of any new item in our home sparks questions.)  I gave them each one of the cone-style filters and told them they could make something with it.

They immediately went to for the crayons and pencils and decorated their filters until they were satisfied.

"Now what can we do with them?"

"I don't know," I said. "What do you think you could do with them?" I opened one up to show them it was not just a triangle.  Their eyes lit up.  They ran upstairs and came back with their favorite little puppy stuffed animals.

"Sleeping bags!"

It was a great idea, but the puppies were a little too big for the filters.  Hmmm.

"I need scissors," may daughter said. "I'm going to make a skirt!"  She trimmed the small end of the filter to make a hole, and slipped the filter over her puppy's head.  She stopped, seemingly satisfied with it being a cape instead of a skirt.  "Now I need to cut holes for the hands."

I left her to her filter-fashions.  (My son had lost interest after the sleeping bag idea, and was now playing with his puppy.)

"Can I have some tape?" was her next request.

"What are you going to do with tape?"

"I'm making a new sleeping bag."  She had decorated plain paper with flowers and hearts and was ready to tape two pieces together to make a bigger sleeping bag.  I gave her the tape.

So the puppy now sits on our coffee table wearing a beautiful filter cape, sleeping in a lovely paper sleeping bag.  My kids both had fun making up stories about puppy sleepovers, and I had about 30 minutes of mostly-free time.  Not a bad impromptu arts & crafts project.

I was at a pizza place recently where they provided each of the kids with a ball of pizza dough occupy them until the pizza arrived.  I was with a group of friends and all together we may have had enough kids to fill a preschool class, so I'm not saying that this pizza dough was the big solution to keeping them occupied or quiet.  But it did get me thinking about what might have happened, had I been thinking a little more artfully...

*Try to make something tall. Now try to make something wide. 

*Can you turn that ball into three small balls? 

*Now what can you make with that? 

*How can you make something long, like a snake.

*Now what would happen if you joined the ends together?

*Can you make something hollow, like a bowl? 

*How do you think they make that ball flat like a pizza?

The dough was a good idea.  Kids always like to have something in their hands.  But sometimes they need a little help thinking about what they can do with it.  With a few questions, you can get them thinking about shapes, properties of materials, what they can do with their own hands.  That day in the pizza place, amidst hungry preschoolers, mom friends I wanted to trade stories with, piles of napkins and pitchers of lemonade, I didn't think about trying to engage them with the dough (even if that might sound silly), but maybe next time I will.  Maybe you will too.

It seems like most of the kids are born in October.  Maybe it's the result of New Year's resolutions by the fertilely-gifted, or maybe it's an effort to have their kids be the oldest in their class (don't get me started on that).  Anyway, my daughter has been going to a lot of birthday parties lately.

I think it was during last fall's birthday rush that she started making birthday cards for her friends.  I must have forgotten to buy one for one of the parties, so I got out some nice cardstock and stickers, and she got to work. 

Now it's really standard practice for her to make birthday cards for everyone.  She likes to match up the corners of an 8 1/2" x 11" piece of cardstock and fold it herself.  Then we talk about what this person likes, and she makes decisions about what to draw. I think it really gets her thinking about her friends in a nice way, She likes to test her own ability to spell "Happy Birthday" and then writes her friend's name at least once.  I bought a box of greeting card envelopes at the office supply store, and she decorates those too.  I sure hope the recipients like these homemade cards as much as she does. One of her friends recently sent out birthday party invitations requesting cards or drawings instead of gifts so she can make a "birthday wall" in her bedroom, which is an idea that I love.

We usually keep it simple with stickers, crayons and markers, maybe rubber stamps.  But collage would be another great way to make homemade cards.  Try using clipped images from past birthday cards or pieces of wrapping paper, or even cheerful pictures from magazines--another good recycling lesson.  Let your child pick out pictures, cut them and glue them onto the card with a glue stick.  You could help her trim the edges so they are smooth, and you'll have a perfectly personal card. 

Just a thought for keeping it crafty.

Now you can find information about art museums relevant to children under my "Tips" tab.  Check it out for free admission info and some links to some great online content you can look at with your kids (some they can look at on their own).

I recently took my 5 year-old to the Philadelphia Art Museum.  It was the week before she started kindergarten, and we had been talking about doing something special together.  I casually suggested the art museum, "a big building with lots of paintings my lots of famous artists" and she jumped on the idea.  I think she wanted to see where her artwork might be hanging one day.

We spent most of our time in the Modern Art wing, where she loved seeing the big colorful canvases of Mark Rothko.  She laughed at a work by Robert Rauschenberg that had "eyes" sticking out from the canvas.  She pointed out one painting (it might have been a Franz Kline) that she said her brother could do.  She enjoyed the Impressionists, and we spent some time talking about how Monet's paintings looked different close up versus a few steps back.  She asked why there were so many naked people in the museum (in the paintings, of course).  I told her that some artists like to paint what the body looks like in different positions, and how our muscles and skin look.  I hope that was an okay answer--she seemed satisfied.

We brought a sketch book and colored pencils (I think that's all they will let you bring in) and after looking at many paintings, we found a bench where she could sit and make her "museum drawings" that were very colorful, expressive, abstract drawings, which seemed perfect.

We spent about 3 hours there, including time for lunch and a stop in the museum store where she picked out two postcards showing paintings that she "really super liked" which now hang on her bulletin board in her room.  She had a great time and wants to go back, and I'm very excited that she's starting out thinking that the museum is exciting and not boring.

Museums can be interesting for kids, if you let them be interested.  Check out some of the links, talk about artists' work and how it connects to some of the work the kids are doing themselves.  Some of the interactive online programs let kids learn about artists through games and videos, or make their own computer images in the style of the artist.  Give it a try...
 

So, the weather has been really nice lately, at least in Media, PA.  The other day, I wanted to go out somewhere with the kids, but really didn't want to go to the playground (with a small "p").  Call me selfish, but I just didn't want to lift the kids up to the monkey bars and hold them while they tried to get across.  What I actually wanted was a Pumpkin Spice Latte, but I couldn't figure out a way to combine my pumpkin spice fix with any kid-centered destination.  So here's what I came up with... 

I told the kids we were going on a field trip, we picked some unwrapped crayons from the crayon bin, put some plain paper in my bag, and we were off.  I parked about three blocks from the coffee place, and I told them that we were going to walk through town looking for things that were interesting or exciting.  We could draw them or do crayon rubbings (like the leaf rubbings you probably did when you were young--put the paper over a textured surface and rub the long side of a crayon over it to transfer the texture.)

The kids liked the activity.  My daughter was immediately into it.  She saw some flags and drew them on her paper. "I'm excited about those flags," she said.  My son started looking for bricks and other patterns on the ground that he could rub his crayon over.  I suggested ideas like adding a second color rubbing on top, or looking for another surface that might look good on the same page.

Soon we arrived at the coffee shop, I got my Pumpkin Spice, and the kids felt like they had done "something" that afternoon.

Just an idea for injecting art into your day...

I started this web site because several moms said things to me like "I'm not good at crafts," or "Crafts are too messy, I rarely let my kids do them!" or other excuses for not encouraging their kids to do arts & crafts activities. Believe me, arts and crafts are a great thing!  They are worth the mess, for sure.  I don't know what I'd do without them.  My daughter loves to draw (and do any kind of art project) and she can entertain herself for hours.  This morning, she even opted to draw instead of watching TV, and said "I'm getting to be too old to watch shows."  Really?

So, let them paint, let them draw, give them paper and glue.  I hope you find some ideas here to help you get comfortable and help your kids get started.  And let me know what you think!  I'd love to hear your comments.  And if you have craft ideas to share, feel free to email me, and I will do my best to incorporate them.

-Kat