Crafts

I wanted to give a little explanation regarding the crafts ideas/projects that I post. There are many, many sites with inspiration and directions for making beautiful craft items to be cherished forever. My crafts are not like that.

For me to post a kid-friendly craft, it is required to have several qualities:

• It requires little to no preparation. Craft sessions in our house last somewhere between five and twenty minutes. If I've had to invest in hours of prep beforehand, I feel I've been had.
• It must need little parental involvement for its completion. With four pairs of little hands, some of which still find stickers challenging, I can't be needed everywhere all the time or everyone gets bored and leaves.
• It calls for supplies that are readily-available or are common household items. I find it hard to get time to shower; journeying to the arts and crafts store to buy some specialty item that doesn't get used because no one want to do my craft does not make it onto my priority list.
• It has to be almost fully recyclable. Four crafters means a lot of creations, and no, I don't keep them all. I don't want to monopolize a landfill with our crafting detritus.

Don't get me wrong, I like crafting and I admire parents who can craft lovely things with their kids. But in our house, crafts serve to let the kids exercise their creativity and to keep then occupied for a short time. Thus, it is the process of the craft that I've chosen to focus on and not the resulting object.