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SingaporeLife Skills from Kids Crafts - Patience, Strategy and Problem Solving
Author: Cate Rocchi
What skills can our children learn through craft activities, creative and imaginative play?
When my three children were very small, we did a lot of crafts. Little cardboard reindeer cutouts stuck on the end of lead pencils; dinosaur footprints (plastic dinosaurs wedged in clay to leave lizard-like tracks – that was a real winner with boy toddlers); pressed flowers; making houses from sticks; salt dough villages and many, many collages.
At that time I quickly set up the craft projects as part of a busy family lifestyle. They were some of the things I did trying to be a ‘good mum’ and I didn't give the activities much thought. Kids crafts were just ticks in the diary along with swimming lessons and mum and toddler group on a Tuesday morning.
Over a decade has passed since the dinosaur footprint making and now my youngest, Alex, is nine or ‘nearly 10’ as she will tell you; Will is 12 and Jack is 15. Alex is the only one who regularly crafts, the boys are into bikes, sport and computers.
The frantic rush of babies and small toddlers is over and I can reflect. I watch Alex begin a clay model. It doesn’t go according to the plan in her head. She starts again and completes another. This is better and worthy of painting. She waits an hour before the clay dries in the sun. She paints it crimson. That colour won’t do. She waits for it to dry, gets the pink paint out and then, of course, sprinkles it with glitter. She spills paint and glitter on the floor. She wipes it up. She goes back and wipes pink paint from door handles. That takes ages. Then she has a break, orange juice and carrot sticks, and begins another model. It is the third and most superior and she paints it in striking rainbow stripes. Hours later, she shows us proudly.
Well done girl!
Along the way I realize Alex has learnt patience, problem solving, to work unsupervised and crucial strategy skills. But most importantly she knows she can make great things, if she puts her mind to it. Her paintings, models and drawings bring smiles to many and they are her own creations.
Cate Rocchi is a writer and lives in Perth, Western Australia. She has worked as a reporter for more than 20 years and has submitted articles to many publications including Playtimes in Hong Kong. Cate has three children and once operated an outdoor children’s activity group in the UK in the 1990s called Kangaroo Kids. The group featured stories, walks and crafts in themes for toddlers and small children and their parents. She writes fiction under Jasper Books, a division of Cate Rocchi Communications.
