60 Ideas for Arts and Crafts

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Many people use “I’m not a teacher” as an excuse for not homeschooling. It’s a mentality they grew up with. I did too. I understand. I got out of it when I felt called to homeschool my children, slowly but surely.

The Industrial Age has turned all of us into specialized professionals along the assembly lines of the world. Each of us has been instructed to take care of only one job and so we go through life assuming teachers teach, bakers bake, pilots fly planes and architects design.

60Ideas

In fact, you CAN teach your child. You can! It’s as simple as picking up a teacher’s manual and reading the lesson the night before. In this post, I am illustrating the point by giving you 60 ideas for arts and crafts. I’m no artist. My kids can draw better than I can. But I teach them art with the right tools.

Even if you yourself are not that great at art you can teach your children art. To teach means to educate. And “educate” come from the Latin word “educare,” which means “leading out, taking somebody from here to there, guiding.” So you can guide your children through the process of discovering art. Take my case: I am not an artist, but I appreciate art. And, I discovered, it does not take much to expose my children to arts and crafts.

Here is a list of 60 arts and crafts you can do with your children:

1. Visit your local Museum of Art. For us, it’s Arrowmont in Gatlinburg and the Knoxville Museum of Art.

2. Visit your local children’s museum. The closest one to us is in Oak Ridge and we have not been yet. I have only heard good things about it, but it’s just been a little out of the way for us.

3. Visit your local science and technology center. Check this list out to locate one near you. They are bound to have craft tables, among all those scientific projects. If you travel, it would make sense to invest in a membership. That way, you can visit everywhere for free. We got a membership at The Muse in Knoxville and have already visited another science center for free (the Discovery Center in Charlotte, NC). That’s what you can do any time you travel.

4. Visit your local natural science museum. They usually have programs and tours for children which end up with a craft. We go to McClung in Knoxville for their free stroller tours.

5. Visit your local artisan shops. Sometimes they have artist at work demonstrations. Exposing the children to the creating process inspires them. We go to the Arts and Crafts community on Glades Road in Gatlinburg – 120+ shops to explore.

6. Visit the National Gallery of Art website for kids and virtual shop. You will gain four things: knowledge, inspiration, ideas, and pretty things to share with friends and family.  Continue reading »


3 Activities for Earth Day 2014

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In our homeschool, we celebrated Earth Day this year with three activities:

1. Trash pick-up around our neighborhood.

It rained on April 22, so we could not pick up trash in our neighborhood. We did it today, two days later, after the ditches dried up. The kids love to get into the ditches to pick up trash and I would prefer not to have to clean up muddy boots. Boy and girl pick up trash in a ditch

We filled up five shopping bags or 13 gallons worth of bottles, cans, plastic pieces, Styrofoam cups, Subway sandwich wrappers, candy bags and bits of papers. Some paper was pink, which delighted my daughter, who loves all things pink. Pink trash!

Boy and girl with 13 gallons of trash they picked up for Earth Day

One would think we live in a trashy neighborhood, but we don’t. Most trash was around overnight rentals, which are about six homes down from our house.

2. Coloring a Crayola page with an Earth Day theme.

We talked about the Earth being a gift from God, its Creator. I gave them envelops with their names on them, which contained a picture of the Earth. I told them God gave the Earth to them and all of us as a gift, so we can enjoy the plants and animals and air and mountains and seas. As such, we should take good care of it. It’s called stewardship.

The envelop idea came from Horizons Preschool, a curriculum I am loosely working through with my daughter. The whole thing went along nicely with our Apologia worldview curriculum called “What On Earth Can I Do?” – review coming up in May, by the way.

3. Planting an AeroGarden.

Somebody gave us this amazing contraption about a year ago. I kept it in the garage, thinking I would start this indoor water garden during the long winter months. Well, I never got around to it. I almost gave it away at one point.

We finally put it together and it’s looking good. Some of the seeds are already germinating. We can see them through the domes. It turns itself on for 16 hours and it shuts off for eight hours. A light comes on when I need to add water. Another light comes on when I need to add nutrients. For city girls like me, this is the perfect garden.

Speaking of gardens, we need to re-plant our small veggie patch. Two days after we planted our tomatoes and peppers, we got hail and snow. Even though I covered them, they shriveled up and died. If that’s not a metaphor for putting children out of their homes at an early age, when they are not yet prepared to face cold shoulders, teasing, competition, bullies and all the other harsh realities of a school setting.

Pepper plant shriveled up because of snow

Yes, everything brings me back to homeschooling.

By the way, my kids loved picking up trash and my son said he would like to do it every day. That’s probably because I told them that every day is Earth Day. Every day is our birthday. Being alive is a privilege worth celebrating. I told him we could plan on a weekly trash pick up around our neighborhood.

Isn’t homeschooling wonderful? We get to change events based on the weather without having to fill out paper work.