Making Time

I was reminded of the fun of pompoms after seeing this tutorial at Bella Dia. so were others!And it gave me a great idea for an arts and crafts activity for the ‘easter party’ at the school I started english teaching at. I’m in the midst of a whole week of pompom-chick-making! The best yarn was a slim acrylic mohair. the best glue was actually a glue stick, as there is less mess.

Crafting with kids is a bit of a challenge. I’ve been working in a children’s art organisation for five years, and we do more open-ended projects to give children arts experiences… but this requires good verbal communication and much of our projects we spend talking and thinking, and surprisingly, less ‘doing’. But now, with my new job, teaching english, i was at a loss of how to approach doing a creative activity with kids in a wide age range with minimal verbal communication.

Looking back I regret not having done something more open-ended, to get the kids to respond to the idea of spring… I fell into the teachery-trap of ‘prepare it ahead, know the exact results’… Alas, i pre-cut the paper beaks and the eyes (with hole punch). But there’s still loads of variety, and they really enjoyed making something so cute, and it took only about 10 minutes.
I also like this kid-friendly craft activity that Kathreen shows on her site: peg dolls. It’s got a clear end-result, which is guaranteed satisfaction, but there’s more room to allow for variety. I plan to do more crafts activities with the kids, and I’m going to keep open-ended in mind!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 13th, 2006 at 2:11 am and is filed under Finished. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.