Craft box

[dylan]

Oh, I get the first post in here:p:lol
We got DS a box of craft supplies on Sunday and it has kept him occupied so happily for 3 days! :D it was such a lightbulb, deschooling myself moment to watch his imagination come out and see him amuse himself for hours with out needing much more interaction than a 'yes darling, that is a wonderful plane':coffee

[Quickening]

Thats great! What came with the box? We usually make our own craft boxes from cardboard boxes and old junk mail or ripped books. The kids collect toilet paper rolls, lids, stones, leaves, shells, twigs, empty cartoons, rags, junk mail, scraps etc for it and we have a smaller supply box with glue, scissors, stapler, stickytape for them to use with their collected stuff.

[dylan]

we just bought a whole lot of stuff like paint (the favourite lol), pipe cleaners, little foam shapes, paddle pop sticks etc and put it in a box we had lying around :D
He is very possesive of it - 'its MY stuff Mama'

[Janet]

How lovely :) We have whatever's lying around get used up here - toilet rolls, wool, boxes, plastic bags, coloured paper, paint. Last night Conor was making letters from clipping pegs together in various constellations. "Don't walk on that little Y, mummy!" :lol

[dylan]

Something really interesting happened last night. After play with his 'stuff' all day - evidenced by the paint from head to toe :lol - he was not interested in the tv at all.
One of the things I keep thinking I should do something about is the amount of tv he watches, but haven't been able to think of things that will occupy him otherwise, particularly as we don't have a backyard at the moment.
Normally as the night wears on he starts getting quite cranky and demanding his videos etc and is generally difficult to keep your cool around, but last night he continued painting etc for quite a while, then had a bath and did some more drawing (mostly on me, paper is just not good enough :lol) then he did ask for finding nemo to be put on but i think that was habit more than anything. We put it on, but with no sound because he just kept getting stories for me to read. Every so often he would look up and tell us what was going on, but in between stories rather than being distracted by it.
He was quite happy to snuggle in between us on the couch and sit quietly while I read to him too, which is not what usually happens!
So obviously giving him that stimulation that requires him to imagine etc rather than the tv makes a huge difference. And because he just played by himself, it wasn't the stressful thing that it usually is to have him up with us.
Light bulb moments all over the place this week, and all because of $15 odd worth of stuff! :D

[Sarasvati]

Craft stuff gives me the irrits... LOL Kira could play with it happily unsupervised but she drops tiny little pieces all over the floor. And I have a baby who is a choker. Maybe I need to set craft stuff up in her room. But I can hear it now "muuuuum! I need heeeeeelp. I can't doooooo it". (Sorry had a shite experience with her at the shops and am a bit AAARGH still).

[Quickening]

Craft stuff gives me the shits too when it comes to CLEANING it up! The kids do help but its those annoying little bits that they don't pick up. DD announces there are simply TOO many to pick up and she doesn't wanna waste time doing it! Fair enough, but hey, I don't wanna waste time picking up little bits either! I guess we could just leave it on the floor for my mum to bitch about when she comes over. Maybe if it bothers my mum, SHE can clean it up : )

I usually have the patio or the spare room designated as craft areas as I can either 1. hose off the patio or 2. shut the spare room door. Viola!

[esp]

my kids (and I) adore making and doing so we have dedicated an entire room to crafts of varying kinds. They pretty much have access to everything in there - with a few things that require supervision (sewing machine). It's great. If any of us ever want to escapea nd do something then we just zoom out there and get on with it. Mostly DS likes to draw with pancils at the moment but DD likes to do a little of everything.

oh and the place is usually a huge mess!

[gemi_ny]

Yep - I'm designing our next house & a craft room is way up on my list of must-haves!

[Kezia]

OK, what's the list of must haves for the craft box? We've got some stuff in the play room, but I am feeling inspired to get more. I think part of my problem with craft is I'm too anal about it - I have a project in mind and don't like it when they won't do it "right". I really need to learn how to step back and let them loose on the materials to do or make what they like.

[dylan]

D has paddle pop sticks (or bits of paddle pop sticks now cos he figured out how to break them :rolleyes), little fuzzy pom pom type things, paint, pipe cleaners, pencils (slowly getting rid of textas while we are renting cos walls were getting too tempting), dolly pegs, straws, foam shapes - basically I went to chicken feed and just got a lot of stuff.
We don't do projects at all, as long as he stays on the table with paints we just let him go! Would probably be a good way to entertain the older 2 while you grab some rest or are 'stuck' boobing B.
I love watching D's imagination take over, we get everything from rockets and planes to pancakes and soup!

[Blossomtime]

Just useful stuff ;) We have orange bags, foil, pom poms, pegs, pipecleaners, icypole sticks, felt, cotton wool, feathers, bottle tops, sequins, buttons, corks, old socks, foam balls... paints (acrylic and watercolour), glue (sticks, paste, pva, craft glue, glue gun), brushes and rollers of different widths, pastels and chalk, crayons... butchers paper, coloured paper and card, black card, corrugated card, wrapping paper with pictures/shapes for cutting, celophane, bubble wrap, paper shopping bags... stickers are great for rainy days too. I never throw anything out :lolChickenfeed is GREAT for most stuff. Windmill is fab too. We're going to get some clay next time we are there because I think Auds is ready to step up from playdough ;)

[dylan]

I've been looking at clay, mostly cos I want to use it! :lol the thought of trying to clean it out of whereever D tried to stick it was not fun though!

[Kezia]

Haha - I was just on the Windmill website trying to decide how much clay to buy!

[dylan]

maybe we could have a craft day? Maybe when it warms up a bit so tthat we can just let the kids go outside and not have to worry about the mess so much :lol

[Blossomtime]

Yeah! Craft day would be fun :)Paint footprints are Audrey's fave. We're just waiting for a super warm day when we can get the wading pool out too so they can hop straight in after :lol

[dylan]

D is just discovering the wonders of painty feet :lol wading pool sounds like a really good idea...

[gemi_ny]

Ooooohhh...sounds fab! (oh....you mean for the kids :rofl)

[Blossomtime]

It feels awesome having that paint squish between your toes ;)

[Currawong]

:eager Aw, I wish I was in Tas to join in!

[luckymummy]

Aw I wish I was in Tas so I could come to a craft day too. Anyone in Sydney want to have one? :D
So a craft box is all sorts of stuff they can stick together? Is there non toxic glue you can buy? We do finger painting quite often, Lucas loves it. I also made play dough too, which he also loves to squish :)

[Beatrice]

I just put in an order at Windmill for next year - paints, papers etc - thanks to Kevin's bonus :lol But I buy stuff second hand whenever I can find it - I just picked up two full tubes of Crayola fingerpaint yesterday which we used this morning to make the Solstice suns.

Last year I gave the big two a joint Chrissy present of a hamper of craft supplies and it was such a hit I'm doing it again this year as well.

[Beatrice]

What's in yours? Most of ours is still in a box after the move, but somehow the craft cupboard was still full of stuff. I inventoried it this week and discovered that there's bugger all craft stuff in there :lol

How do you manage the issue of "wasting" craft supplies? My kids adore collage more than anything else, but I have a hyooge Thing about stocking up and then stuff getting dumped on the floor and otherwise not used "properly". I have come to managing it by having a tub for collage stuff. When I buy packets of embellishments, I keep all the opened and unopened packets in the top shelf where they can't reach, and just dump a small amount into the collage tub. So even if they accidentally knock it off the table the wastage is kept to a minimum.

[Ceres]

Yeah the wasting of stuff annoys me a lot, particularly the stuff dumped on the floor which can never be picked up and ends up in the vacuum cleaner. We have lots of paint, paper, cardboard, recycling bits like toilet rolls. I try to keep it in an orderly fashion because once it ends up in a jumbled mess in a big box no one can ever find what they're looking for. I have pretty low tolerance for stuff being left on the ground so most of that ends up in the bin.

[dylan]

revisiting this thread over 2 years on!

Wastage... sigh. You've seen what happens here Beatrice! my 2 will get everything out and spread it from one end of the craft area to another - considering that is an old community hall that is a lot of craft stuff over a big space!
We finally got our act together to have craft days in said hall - and it is all swept up and packed away ready to go for friday :)

I need to get a craft cupboard so that I can control the usage a bit - at the moment it is just in a big cardboard box and the kids get it all out and do stuff like fill the trampoline with cotton wool for snow:blueroll

[Beatrice]

Yeah, a lockable cupboard is essential here, I reckon :lol

[Kris]

I did a whole blog post on craft :lol

I do put ours all away but having older kids means that the chaos is reasonably contained now.

Modelling beeswax, wet on wet paints, yarn, fleece, playdough, paintbrushes, pencils, crayons, embroidery cotton, felt squares, cookie cutters, weaving looms, toilet rolls, makedo stuff.

I have a bit of a thing about: textas, pens, acrylics. Anything that I HAVE to scrub off walls, floors etc I've quietly gotten rid of.

[dylan]

oh goddess yes - textas have no place in my house anymore! I'm planning on getting some of the Lyra pencils and those square crayons soon - the cheap ones just aren't cutting it.