Have kids? Love handmade? Ever put the two together to begin creating a love for handmade in your kids? Not sure how? Here are a few ideas to get you started:
1 - Encourage their Creativity!
All kids have a natural imagination built into them. Foster that! Provide your kids with many opportunities to cultivate their creativity. For some kids this will result in art project after art project! For others it will be more performance related (think drama, dance, athletics). Others yet will be more logically based such as building with Legos or K'Nex or ttaking apart/putting back together various items (with your permission of course!). If your child has a different style of creativity than you, it will take a bit more work to create opportunities for your child, but it will be worth it!
2 - Give Handmade Gifts!
Your kids might be drawn in by the commercials during cartoons or the huge toy catalogs that come out this time of year and ask for the latest gadget complete with blinking lights and the needs for four size D batteries. Resist the urge to overload their holidays with commercial gifts. Explore sites like Etsy and Artfire and find vendors that create gifts for children. Once the gift is open, talk about the handmade aspect of the creation and elements unique to that gift (ie - eco-friendly, one of a kind, custom made, etc.)
3 - Take Kids to Handmade Fairs/Craft Shows/Etc.
There is a wide variety of fairs and craft shows that you can find around your community (especially around the holidays) that could serve as a creative way to introduce your children to the idea of handmade products and vendors. While there looking at the various products and vendors, talk with your children about all of the positive attributes of handmade products. Have your children identify their favorite handmade products at the show and why. If funds allow, set a budget of $5 or $10 and encourage your children to figure out what they would spend their money on. Or if actual funds can't be used, make it a creative exercise. Give an example like "You have $50 to spend (hypothetically) to buy something for each member of our family. What would you buy and why?"
4 - Scour the Web for Resources
There are a ton of kid friendly resources on the Web that can help you in your endeavors to create a love of handmade in your kids. Here is a not-very-comprehensive list of some resources to get you started!
General:
Handmade News-Kids' Page
SimpleKids Blog
Art Projects:
Crafty Crow Blog (this is one of my personal faves for finding creative kids crafts + helpful tutorials.)
Family Fun Crafts
Craft Shows (find craft shows/art fairs/etc. in your community):
FestivalNet
Craft Site Directory
Handmade Stuff for Kids (Shopping):
HandmadeKids (Australian site)
Etsy Products for Kids (hope you have time to poke around...there are 2230 pages to browse through!)
Artfire Products for Kids (533 pages of handmade products for kids!)
Leave a comment and let me know how you encourage a love of handmade for YOUR kids!
Thank you for using one of my outfits, Holly!:) You are so right about the importance of encouraging a love for handmade and/or what goes into making a product at an early age on many levels...that kind of creativity feeds the brian like you cannot imagine, it can help them appreciate and respect their toys and clothing more if they know what it took to make them in the first place, it can be a lesson in recycling with all the things you can make out of existing items... the benefits are countless! Thank you for bringing this point up!
ReplyDelete♥ Drea
You are welcome Drea! I'm having fun helping my kids learn to love handmade...both as things they personally create and receive!
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