Crafty Carrs: Crafts for Kids

Crafting is such an important part of fostering creativity and free thinking in children. Thankfully this is extremely fun for me, so my kids get plenty of exercise in this! I am always trying to find different ways for my children to be creative. This can definitely be more challenging in some children than others and it always gets harder as kids get older and think that craft projects are only for small children or girls.

There are several things to remember when crafting with children. First you are building memories that will last a lifetime. Your children WILL remember the things you made together or traditions you have with great fondness as they grow older.

A great example of this is our Family Christmas Stockings. This started when I was a small girl. My mother would pull out glue, glitter, poof balls, yarn, google eyes, paint, felt and just about anything else she could find and along with a perfectly blank, cheap red and white Christmas stocking. She would sit at the table with my sister and I each year in the beginning of the Christmas season and we would each decorate our own Christmas stocking. The only rule was to put our name across the top and the rest was up to us how we would decorate them. I remember thinking how creative my Mom's stockings always were and being so excited that everyone who came into the house could see my new art project hanging from the mantle with care! This went on into my teens and now this is a tradition in my home as well. Each year on Thanksgiving night we pull out all of our decorations for Christmas and decorate the house. One of our favorite things to do is to look at the giant bucket full of stockings from years past! The next day we make a new one for that year. This is a tradition that my kids would be devastated to lose and when they grow up I hope they will continue the tradition with their own children!

Note about this picture: I was looking for a picture of the kids decorating stockings and this was about 4 years ago. I am now finishing this post with tears in my eyes at how quickly the kids grow! I will post plenty of pictures of this and other Christmas crafts in our Christmas page in December. See below a picture of him taken this week. That's a whole lot of growing in 4 short years :(

Ok, back to crafting! I also feel like you can turn anything into a moment of creativity with your children. Remember the colored vases I had made last week? Well when I got home I realized the first batch was way too dark of a blue. So I got out a paper plate and made an artist palette of paint and let Tanner and Tera paint two of the vases however they wanted to.