Heart of the Matter Meme: Being Creative

This week's Heart of the Matter meme asks for ideas for the non-creative moms or those that think they’re not creative. "What are some of the best projects your family has done? What fun things doing you remember doing as a child? Are you naturally creative or did you have to learn? Any sites you could share? "

I'm a pretty creative mom. When we first started homeschooling, I was definitely one of those ultra-crafty moms, but I've become less and less inclined to be crafty through the years. Now I have to remind myself to do crafts with the younger two, and they get very excited when we do.

Autumn definitely brings out the creative side of me. When my kids were really little, one of their favorite things was the fall bracelet. This is so easy and somehow so thrilling to them. Just take a piece of clear packing tape and put it around their wrists. Go outside and find bits of nature to stick on the tape: bits of leaves, grass, flower petals, etc. (Sticks don't work too well; flat objects are best.) When the bracelet is fairly well loaded, cut it off and put another piece of tape over the top. Now they have a bookmark or just an autumn keepsake! Or, if they're like my kids, they won't want you to cut it off and they'll keep adding more objects to it throughout the day until it is sagging off their wrists.

Of course we always have to do leaf collections and rubbings each year. One year we did leaf rubbings in lots of different colors on white paper, glued the white paper on orange or yellow construction paper, and then covered it all with clear contact paper for placemats. You can have them label the type of tree and/or copy a fall poem onto this, as well, before covering it with contact paper.

Another perennial craft at this time of year seems to be fruit and/or vegetable stamping. You just need poster paint and a variety of fruits and/or vegetables, which you can cut into various shapes. One year we made acrostics to go with each fruit/vegetable. So, for example, we wrote an acrostic poem for apple, like

Apples
Pink lady
Pies, sauce, crumble, crisp
Love to eat you just like you are
Excellent fruit.

and then stamped the edges with various shapes cut from apples. You could do this now with pumpkins, squash, pears, potatoes, etc. or do the same thing with leaves, making your acrostic poems from the names of trees. If the kids get tired of acrostics, this would be a great time to try other form poetry like haiku or cinquain. Here's a great site that briefly introduces types of form poetry.

My favorite sites for craft ideas are Enchanted Learning (click here for autumn crafts), Crayola, and Family Fun.

In our house, though, most of my kids' creativity is self-initiated. Essential to being creative is to have an abundant supplies. We have a big tub that we call the invention box. This is where all those things go that you say, "What could we make with this?": egg cartons, styrofoam chunks, paper towel and toilet paper cardboard rolls, shoeboxes, containers of all sorts, etc. I also stock up on all the essentials each summer when the school supplies are on sale, so we have ample markers, crayons, scissors, glue, and paper. (It's a good idea to keep back some of each so that you can bring out fresh markers, etc., during the year.) I usually put fresh supplies in my younger kids' Christmas stockings, too, and also some extras like their own rolls of masking tape, poster paint, and some other exciting craft item like plastic eyeballs or pipe cleaners. We live big here.

(And that reminds me: one of my daughter's favorite gifts was when I made her a craft supply center. I just bought one of those craft/tool organizers (sort of like this) at Walmart and filled each drawer with all sorts of things: beads, glue sticks, eyeballs, ribbon, pipe cleaners, pom poms, etc.)

All that to say, if you give a kid an empty box, he'll ask for a pair of scissors. If you give him a pair of scissors, he'll ask for a piece of tape. If you give him a piece of tape, well, you know the rest.

Related posts on SmallWorld:
Celebrating Autumn Resources
Apple Unit Study
Teaching Creative Writing
Combating the January Blahs