Conversations through Crafts

Hi All!!!

I hope you are all having a good Memorial Day!!

First thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all military service members here and abroad that have given their lives to help protect others and their freedoms, or try to provide additional freedoms. We owe a huge debt to you!!!

To those still here that have or are serving in the military, thank you for all you have or are doing. Each of us would not be the same without your courage, bravery, and sacrifice that you AND your families endure for the rest of us. We know and appreciate that here at Little Katy Bugs a great deal.

For our craft today, my daughter actually picked a book and then the project that we would do with the book. 🙂 This gave her some control and I could talk to her about some things that I wanted to make sure she had in the forefront of her mind. My only directions to her were to pick a shorter story that we could read on a video and then pick a craft based on something you saw in the book. She had to read the book ahead of time and think of the craft to complete and make sure all the supplies were available. I helped her think things through, but only with guiding questions.

We read the book Wild Friends by K.R. Knight. This book is published by bendon publishing out of Ashland, OH. (They have a website with free activities, contests, crafts, and more at bendonpub.com) She then fell in love with the Zebra picture in the book, and wanted to paint a zebra, but asked if I would give her an outline to follow to paint. I tried to free hand an outline, so it looks a little funny, but she didn’t care. 😍

We then got out our supplies and did our video.

Supplies:

• Book to read
• Paper
• Water color
• Water
• Paint brushes
• Safe place to paint
• Imagination and questions you may want to have them think about for the story picked.

Instructions:

1. Read the book, and then think about a craft to do inspired by something in the book.
2. In this instance since she wanted to paint, we had the paper and outline done, then started painting it.
3. While doing the activity we talked about her favorite part. I then tried to steer the conversation to the topic I wanted to talk about. In this case making sure we think about our actions before we do them, and that it doesn’t matter who we interacting with, we want to put good in the world, and not the opposite. Basically I wanted to get at the point that we want to be the change we want to see in the world. It has to start somewhere.

It was interesting to see her take on it. It helps me to understand my children more when I can get them to open up and just talk like they are speaking to a friend. I feel like they just try to tell me what I want to hear sometimes, and not their actual feelings on a subject. My daughter especially has this tendency. I feel like when we do a craft while we talk they are more interested in the craft than coming up with an answer I want to hear and instead just answer with their own thoughts.

I hope this inspires you to find a way to create an opportunity to speak to your children in different ways and get to know them better. They really are amazing creatures and see the world in such a pure way. It’s uplifting to see their point of view.

Happy Memorial Day!! Until next time, keep creating!!!