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Making Crafts for Thanksgiving with Kids: Can it Actually Be Educational?

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,.

There is a very negative side to lots of the crafts that children are given in that they are usually “copycat crafts”. A common, old fashioned way of doing crafts projects is the traditional way of following and adults model.

When this is done it strips the activity of any creativity along with thinking skills. It also takes away the possiblity of developing a good self esteem.

Its Educational Arts and Crafts that allow the children the amazing benefits of creativty, self esteem and problem solving as they work on their own creations and not the adults model.

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 most used categories in Educational crafts is cafeteria style. 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”.

This style of Educational Crafts, cafeteria style, is one that children love. They get some sort of template or base to create a particular project and then are given an array of materials to decorate or create the project, which makes them very individual.

Doing art and allowing choices instead of just following instructions robot like, are vital to kids development.

Without adult help, the kids need to choose the materials they want and then create the craft to the best of their ability and age level.This encourages initiaitive takiing and independence.

There are problems that crop up that they will need to determine how to solve. Is there enough glue for the amount of papers they want to glue or should they use a piece of fabric or shiny paper for their picture.

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.

If you are going to recreate and Indian pow-wow along with Indian dances then drums would be a great craft to make.

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

Construction paper, shiny paper, tissue paper, and pieces of material are some of what can be offered to cover the container. When construction paper is the only type available, add lots of colors as 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

Don’t be hesitant in offering the children many items to decorate their drums with. 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.

Older children decorate thoughtfully while younger children just paste down objects without giving placement much thought.

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. (this make it look more realistic)

If you don’t have any dowels or sticks for the drums, the children can use their palms.

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.