Are Crafts Beneficial/Important?

[daycarediva]

I agree that free art is incredibly beneficial. We have art supplies available all day every day for the children to use as they please. Although as playcare said, they end up in the bottom of bags. "Crafts" that are mainly teacher led, end up on the fridge. My parents LOVE 'crafts'. Art---not so much!

I try to make parent pleasers as 'free art' as possible. Eg I had the kids paint/decorate white butcher block paper however they wanted, and we are using that to wrap their parent gifts.

They helped me make cornstarch 'salt dough' ornaments. They kneaded and rolled it. One child wanted to paint his, another added beads before baking, one glued sequins on after baking, one wanted to color his dough. All requests were granted.

We did canvases, the kids picked the shape that they wanted to make, I taped it on the canvas, the child painted around it whatever colors they wanted, and we peeled off the shape (snowflakes, gingerbread boy/girl, Christmas trees, etc) and they looked AWESOME!

I did ONE handprint craft, but that was child requested (DS made a tshirt at school and the kids wanted to make one, too). Now they will wear them for the Christmas party and all be matching. I'm sure the parents will love it (and admittedly, they are cute)

[SignMeUp]

My children do mostly open-ended art projects, using materials that get rotated in and out every so often. They decide what they're making, how to make it, etc. Markers of varying types, glue, glue sticks, different types of crayons, chalk, water, tempera paints, water color paints, feathers, beads, glue, coffee filters, cotton balls, collage materials, pom poms, google eyes, a variety of sizes and shapes and colors of paper, recycled boxes, etc. etc.

However, we also do occasional craft projects, perfection not required ::
Often these are items that advance another purpose: Beads for beginning patterning, little cotton-ball birds in an egg carton nest to PLAY with when we learn about eggs and birds, rolled up paper candy canes because they're fun to pretend-lick :: Kids have major input into how to do these crafts, and I don't position their parts, except sometimes for the littlest toddlers who want to be included in the play, but don't want to finish the project.

So, for anyone who needs or wants a CRAFT, here is a fun one, if you can muddle through my directions. It's really simple once you understand:
1. Make a square piece of paper (there's a whole lesson for 3s and 4s there, in how to make a rectangle into a square :: or you can pre-prep that for them)
2. Color in a solid line, maybe 1/2" wide on average, on two adjacent sides (it looks like an L) My kids have used colors from pink to black :: They choose their own colors Don't color anywhere else on the page (that's the 'hard part' according to my kids.
3. Turn the paper upside down.
4. Look for the corner that is completely white (or whatever color your original paper is) by lifting each corner slightly.
4. Start rolling a tube, from that all-white corner. It often helps kids to roll around a marker, or a pencil.
5. Watch the candy cane form as they roll :: It's fun to watch their faces as the stripes appear.
6. Have a tiny piece of tape ready to fasten down the corner as soon as it's rolled up all the way. Then let the marker or pencil slide out of the tube (which is also worth a million laughs, to my kids :
7. Roll one end of the candy cane around a marker, pencil or your finger, to form the curve.
8. Ta-da!! :: Candy cane!!

My kids will make a million of them, for play, and 'decorations' Three and four year olds can do it on their own after you walk them through it.

It's a craft; it's sequencing; it's following instructions; it's a toy; it's a decoration; it's making choices, it's making predictions; it's learning colors for littler ones; but mostly it's just fun ::

[kendallina]

from the sound of it, almost everyone has said that they do art. We do lots of art...gluing, cutting, painting, play doh, etc.
I just put materials out and the table and thats it.

It sounds like people are split on the crafts.

Agreed. I think most everyone here does art, it's product-oriented crafts that not everyone does. I have an entire room dedicated to creating art and there is almost always someone in the art area cutting, gluing, painting, etc. It's just crafts that I don't (usually) do.

[Unregistered]

I do both open ended art and crafts. My parents love getting both. Through art they see how their child is practicing on their own drawing shapes/letters/figures, gluing, cutting,etc and how their child is progressing on a skill. Through the crafts they are also practicing the skills and in the end they made something recognizable. I give them the materials, and say we are making a ____, and give them the materials to create their project. We will have read books about the theme/subject during the week. I do not expect the craft to be perfect or for all the children's crafts to look the same. I love seeing the diversity on how each child interprets what their item will look like.

[Controlled Chaos]

I offer art everyday to children I interested. I do a craft per week to give the parents something for their fridge I usually do a book project a month (this month is the gingerbread man) where the pages are usually half art and half craft to tell the story. Parents and kids love the books.

My husband refers to the dc as my craft sweat shop though :: ...so there's that

[KiddieCahoots]

My kids do both, and I'm a huge craft lover....had my own booth at Cape Cod Crafters for yrs. and can still duplicate a craft from a photo. For that reason alone, with completing the finished craft project, viewed as perfection in order to sell it, would I have to say I don't believe crafts are the beneficial part as art is.
Thank goodness no one ever confined our great artist to crafts!
Although in this line of work, I believe it's better to provide both for necessary exposure.
I do crafts to teach the children how to understand teacher directed activities for future use in school, and to give the parents a finished product they can understand and put into perspective of what our day consist of. I do explain open ended art to parents, but they don't seem to understand the meaning behind it as easily.
I do arts to expose the children to unlimited boundaries of textures, colors, mediums, designs, patterns, etc. And encourage this by discovery and discussion of our natural world around us, and the help of books to guide us.

[Josiegirl]

I know crafts are thought of as parent pleasers but I also think dcks love to see their finished product, even if it only kinda a little bit looks like a reindeer or might be an angel if you tip it upside down and stand on one foot to look at it. Kids need to feel that pride in what they do and crafts offer one more way to do that. As far as the value, if I had to choose I'd certainly choose art for self expression and creativity any day but I offer both.