Taking care of young children is fun, but let's be honest, it can also be a handful at times to keep children entertained and learning new things while you multitask between work and life. Sometimes parents fall into the trap of letting their TVs babysit their children for them. Kids these days spend hours during the day playing video games or texting their buddies on their mobile phones. It would be easy to just let their kids find their own entertainment, but sometimes you can't help but feeling a little guilty.
As a responsible and caring parent, you know that your children deserve better. You want them to have fun without the violence on TV. You want them to experience new things and learn new ideas. You want them to create, not just to consume brainless entertainment.
This is precisely why it's such a good idea for parents to start crafting with their children. As the DIY and handmade wave sweeps the nation, parents everywhere are increasingly passing on the tradition of crafting with their young children.
Crafting benefits children in multiple ways. It stimulates their imagination and unleashes their innate creativity. Crafting exercises their logical thinking as your children process the instructions. Crafting also enhances teamwork as they learn to share their resources and supplies with siblings or friends from school.
Before you start jumping onto a new kids craft project, it's helpful to read some tips and advice from people who have been crafting with their kids for a long time. After all, you want all the benefits of crafting with your kids, minus the mistakes that parents usually make. Below is a list of the top 5 mistakes most parents make when crafting with their kids:
Care more about the product than the process. Many parents get too caught up with making the perfect craft project that they forget to let the kids be kids. Very often, kids will make things that bear no resemblance to the craft project instructions. As long as they had fun and enjoyed the process, parents should give kids a lot of freedom in their craft activities.
Take over the process. Many parents do not like to see their kids struggle. When their kids get stuck on a particular task, instead of suggesting and prompting the kids to work it out on their own, they feel the need to complete the task for them. And before they realize it, they would take over the entire process. Kids learn better if you let them work out a solution on their own.
Become impatient. Sometimes kids have short attention span. Instead of becoming impatient at your kids for abandoning their projects, it's more effective to ask them to help you clean up and pick up the craft project at a later time.
Use negative words to describe the finished craft project. It's really not about the finished craft project. So use positive words to describe your kids' projects, even if they look nothing like what they should be. It's the experience and the process that counts.
Give their kids projects that are inappropriate for their age. Surprisingly, this is a common mistake. But it's easy to see why this could turn into a disaster. If you give younger kids a more complicated project, they may get frustrated. If you give your older kids a really simple project, they may get bored. Give them age appropriate craft projects to work on.
Edda Shea is the founder of Kid Craft Project: a website for people who enjoy crafting with their kids. It is an online directory that sources the best ideas for kid craft projects. Edda is a lifelong crafts enthusiast and enjoys everything handmade.
