Homeschooling Craft

by Jan
(California)

I keep EVERYTHING!! And I mean everything! Lids, cartons, jars, papers, magazines, wrapping paper. I try to have it sorted in different boxes so we can easily get hold of things depending on what craft activity we are going to do.

No matter what we are studying, I try to build some sort of craft activity out of it. The kids love having a record of their trips, or nature study activities and we have strung up wires across the rumpus room that we use as our main study area and clip the craft projects to the wire.

If we go on a beach trip or forest walk, we collect all sorts of things. We might be focusing on recyling or junk craft, or we might be learning about trees and we do leaf prints or bark rubbings. I don't buy a lot of expensive craft equipment or supplies, I make use of what we find. You just need good paper, PVA glue, and good paints as a pretty good base for most things.

You can build any kind of lessons around craft activities, and the kids don't even realize they have had a maths lesson. We might do shapes and fractions by cutting things and mosaicing them or having to work out the dimensions of a piece of card and dividing the number of squares or something like that. I am not artistic in the least, but I have learned through experience, if I have lots of things available, the kids come up with amazing artworks.

So I think homeschooling craft activities is the easiest and most fun way to learn about all sorts of things.