Adventures In Craft

I had always assumed I was the only mother who loathed the thought of ‘doing craft’ with my child. Even non-mothers seemed to enjoy the prospect of craft projects done in tandem with small children — every time my sister would look after my son the end result was always a spectacular craft project that meant he now owned a dinosaur made of juice bottles and plastic forks, or elaborate masks based on paper plates, or handicrafts that could have been sold at the markets. But me, the best I could manage was flinging some play-dough and cutters at my poor deprived child and agreeing that everything he made was fantastic. I felt like a failure. That was until I was having lunch with an acquaintance who was a the earth-mother handmade-everything type, and I bravely asked her about the craft projects she undertook with her son, expecting to be regaled with tales of how she loved to construct delicate mosaics or some such with her three year old. I was therefore surprised when she exclaimed, “Craft? Screw that. I send him to daycare three days a week, he can do that messy stuff there.” My joy at hearing this was overwhelming.

But lately I re-considered ‘doing craft’ with my craft-enthusiastic preschooler, telling myself that I just hadn’t found the right project yet. So I turned, as I do with most things in life, to the internet for help. Many entries listed as craft activities for kids seem to be mainly about colouring in, which was not really what I was looking for — I wanted to make stuff with my kid, not watch him use crayons. So I refined my search and plunged back in. First stop was a blog with a title that seemed to promise exactly what I was looking for — Easy Child Crafts. I was even more excited when I read near the top of the homepage the line ‘Have fun with the most doable easy child crafts you’ve ever seen!’ This huge compendium of ideas has plenty of projects for even the most craft-challenged households. Another site that has a lot of links to craft projects, some more involved than others, is the Australian site Joey Bee.

After a few easy successes with toilet rolls and dried leaves, I decided we were ready to move on to more involved projects. First we tried origami. Now, I was incapable of making decent origami figures when I was a kid, but the origami projects on Tammy Yee’s page looked so good I couldn’t resist. The end result was that I learned two important things — I still can’t fold paper evenly, and four year olds are probably not dextrous enough to attempt origami. That said, if your children are at a stage where they can fold paper and make the edges meet neatly, origami is a fantastic way to while away the hours.

The next project we tackled together was that old primary school stand-by, papier mache. After an evening of cutting newspapers into strips, and a morning of mixing up glue we were ready. At least we were kind of ready — I hadn’t thought of what we were actually going to make, and the suggested projects from the kid (’Let’s make a spaceship!’ ‘How about a dinosaur Mum? A life-sized one?’ ‘Okay, maybe we’ll just make a cow’) were not helping. So I blew up a balloon and decided to make a balloon shaped papier mache object. For those who have yet to experience it, basic papier mache is pretty easy — you take strips of paper, soak them in a glue mix (the most simple version is flour mixed with boiling water to make a thin cream-like mix) and then cover a frame of some description to form the shape you want. The paper strips will harden, leaving you with something you can then paint and use as you wish. Well, that is the theory at least. In our household the end result was a huge mess and a sobbing four year old who couldn’t understand why Mummy was unable to make him a dinosaur. If you are interested in doing your own papier mache project, I suggest you check out the Papier Mache Resource, which has instructions from beginner level to complicated constructions such as mermaid marionettes (don’t laugh, some people are talented enough to pull this kind of thing off).

Feeling confident despite a lack of successes I thought I would try to tackle something ambitious — a sewing project. I found that About.com had a great section with lots of information on teaching kids to sew, but after reading some of the ideas I decided teaching my preschooler to sew was going to be pushing it. Instead I made some sewing cards for him to play with. I cut some thick cardboard into rectangles roughly the size of a normal envelope, and then got the draughtsman of the household (my husband) to draw some simple outline pictures on them with a black felt pen (dinosaurs and spaceships were particularly well received). I punched holes in regular intervals around the outline, tied some wool into a large blunt plastic needle I had bought at a local $2 shop and helped my son ’sew’ around the outlines. While the end result may have been pretty basic, I figure that the more I can do to encourage my son to develop the skills required to outfit me in couture-standard clothing in later years, the better. And best of all, it kept him relatively quiet for ages without any mess. Now that is the kind of craft project this craft-averse parent can love.