Scrapbooking and Other Crafts

Are you a scout leader, crafts director for a camp or other children’s program instructor looking for a craft concept for children? You may think that you are not really creative and don’t think you can come up with craft projects.

Don’t kid yourself. It’s easy to come up with ideas if you start thinking and seeing the world from a child’s perspective. Look around the house and yard and you will start to see great ideas from the little things you usually don’t see.

To start with, remember that nothing is perfect and kids don’t care about perfection anyway.

You need to also remember that kids have their own ways of doing things so if it’s not done your way it will still work out. Kids love to do crafts and work with their hands so don’t worry about picking the wrong thing.

For kids, doing crafts is play time and as long as you give them a little guidance, supplies and ideas they will have a great time.

The next thing you may want to think about is the money involved in various crafts. Will you have a nice budget to purchase items from the store or next to nothing where finding things around the house or outdoors will do the job.

If you are purchasing kits, know how many kids there will be and maybe a little extra for goof ups and extra kids. Sometimes these prepackaged kits can be put together yourself with things you already have or finding them at the dollar store to build your own kits.

If you decide to create your own kits there may be some time necessary to pre-ready some of the parts like cutting out shapes from cloth for each of the kits.

Despite what some people say, you may find that boys and girls like the same types of crafts but the outcome may look different because of society’s indoctrination of what they feel are boys or girls crafts. I have had many boys sit making moccasins and girls carving out of wood. Don’t limit what you think the kids may want to do.

FOR SOME GREAT KIDS CRAFTS IDEAS, CLICK HERE

Something I’ve found over time is that what I thought might be the outcome of a certain project ends up being entirely different because the kids see from a different perspective than I do. Don’t let that stop the activity. Let them be creative in their own ways.

I expect that what you don’t want is for everything to look exactly the same. Creativity helps kids with their imaginations and allows them to grow as individuals.

Something else I’ve realized is that if I give the kids specific instructions and tell them to do everything to the letter, the craft turns into a task and they become bored very quickly.

If I the kids the freedom to work things out on their own with a little guidance when necessary, things turn out a lot more fun, a lot more creative and so much more enjoyable for everyone.