National Craft Month

March is National Craft Month; a time to rejoice in the creative and dust off long-forgotten and half-completed projects. Students of all ages will enjoy participating in a variety of crafts related to seasonal or conceptual topics. Crafting includes a little bit of something for everyone.

Finding Craft Inspiration and Ideas 

If you need some ideas and inspiration to begin the journey to releasing your inner crafter, there are numerous family-friendly web resources that provide easy-to-follow instructions.

Craft videos are available on many organizational craft sites. These short media clips walk you through the idea, materials, and instructions. I greatly appreciate the videos that share kid-friendly crafts such as Michael's Crafts.

Craft guides are wonderful to copy off and include in Ziploc bags with the materials for take-home family activities that are low on stress and high on fun. Crayola offers a variety of craft ideas that can be connected to learning objectives and used to reinforce skill practice at home.

Benefits of Crafting

Beyond the simplistic goal of having fun with students, crafts can have numerous benefits for kids, parents, and educators.

Benefits include:

• Reducing stress
• Building relationship
• Developing new skills
• Connecting to the curriculum
• Engaging learners
• Inspiring critical thinking and problem solving

Crafting Across the Curriculum

• Social studies scrapbooks can be designed to include crafts from each social studies topic throughout the year. For example, students can craft a two-dimensional popsicle stick log cabin for Lincoln’s birthday, or a tribute medal made of foil for their chosen hero from history.
• Language Arts can be incorporated into craft time as students design, display, and present their favorite craft to the class. I like to record these projects in a class book titled Our Favorite Crafts, which includes a picture of each student’s work, as well as student-written directions.
• Math lends itself to a number of related crafts as well as the procedures of crafting. Kids love putting their rulers, protractors, and other math tools to good use as they move through the steps to complete an engaging project. Math concepts and skills can also be explored through a range of related activities, such as geometric weaving or building a clock.
• Science can be practically applied in various ways throughout the crafting process as students measure, record, and analyze their results. Crafting is also a dynamic way to explore topical science interests of the class. We often created recycled art in my classroom using scraps from our other crafts. This was a wonderful way to actively model reusing and recycling classroom resources.