- Maplewood Nursery
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Creative Arts & Crafts Ideas for Young Kids
Young children get far more from creative work when there is no finished example to copy. Open-ended materials - paint, paper, glue, natural objects, boxes - let a child make decisions, and decision-making is the real skill being practised.
Resist the urge to tidy the work as it happens or to correct proportions. A purple sun and a six-legged cat are evidence of a child thinking for themselves, not mistakes to be fixed.
Set up somewhere the mess does not matter, put out fewer materials than you think you need, and let your child combine them however they like.
Ask “tell me about it” rather than “what is it?”. One invites a story; the other suggests you should have been able to tell.
Materials worth keeping
Cardboard tubes and boxes, scrap paper, string, buttons, fabric offcuts, leaves and twigs, old magazines, tape. A collection of interesting odds and ends beats a craft kit almost every time.
Process over product
Some days the painting will be abandoned after two minutes and the water jar will become the activity. That is fine. The purpose is exploration, not a finished piece to put on the fridge.
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