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source: freakgirl

Considering Your Children

How old are your children? Can you put the craft supplies at their level, or is that a disaster waiting to happen? Do you want them to be able to get the craft supplies on their own, or only when you help them?

There are no right answers to these questions across the board, but there may be right answers for your family. We went through the whole “cutting hair” stage with our oldest, and you couldn’t have paid me during that time to leave scissors anywhere she might have been able to access them. Now, I find that keeping some of their basic supplies where they can get to them on their own encourages more arts and crafts, which is important to me. My kids are still very little, though, so I don’t give them free access to everything, just the things that I think they’re old enough to handle.

Crafts in Your Family

What role do crafts play in your family? Do you place a lot of value on arts and creativity and want your children to spend time every day coloring, drawing and creating? Are crafts something you only do every once in a while? How many craft supplies do you have? Are you happy with the amount of time you spend on arts and crafts, or is the storage and location of them a hindrace to doing it more often?

Obviously your craft “philosophy” should have an impact on how you store arts and crafts. If crafts aren’t a high priority or something you want to do often with your children, then a basket, bucket or bin shoved up on a shelf somewhere may be enough. If crafts are something you want to encourage regularly, then you’ll need to make them easier to get to, so that the struggle of getting everything out doesn’t prevent you from doing more crafts.

Space in Your Home

Where do you most often do crafts? In your kitchen? In a playroom? Outside? Is there a storage space – for example, an armoire, a closet, a shelf, a drawer or a cabinet – near your craft area that you could use for storing crafts?

As I said before, having the space to store your crafts conveniently will often make a big difference in your willingness to drag everything out for your children. Making more room for crafts – if they’re important to you – is a good way to encourage their use. If this is currently a problem, start brainstorming now about what areas you could shift around to make more space for arts and craft supplies, keeping in mind whether you want those to be within your children’s reach or not.