Pregnancy
Decorating Arts and Crafts
by Kyanna Sutton"Again?!" I'd groan, scream, or cry when my mom announced what amounted to an annual occurence in my family: moving.
We moved 13 times before I was 14 years old. Once my mom didn't even tell me we were moving. She and my two younger sisters picked me up from camp and after we had been driving for fifteen minutes, my mom said, "Oh, we moved, you know."
I like to think of the constant upheaval as one of my mom's many eccentricities. My sisters like to think of the moves (and pretty much anything mom does) as further evidence that our mother is crazy.
Perhaps. But fun. Because when we moved, my mother tried to mitigate the anxiety of an uprooting by letting us go crazy with the decorating.
Since you may not want to encourage the Pollock in your child, I will impart three of our less crazy decorative exercises.
Move over Martha!
In our family, the moving-in "process" began by selecting some favorite music (typically the soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever" or something by the Village People), then we'd make some sweet treat to inspire our creativity.
Crafty Collage
For kids of all ages
Although my mother let her daughters throw paint on the wall, she didn't let us use sharp scissors. If your kids are under eight, make sure you have rounded kids' scissors.
What you need:
Cut images out of a magazine and glue on to a poster board or sheet of paper. We used to make our own paste using flour and water. The homemade stuff works but it's pretty clumpy. If your kids are older than five, spring for glue.
Sometimes, my mother would give us a theme, or a creative rule. For example, once we could only use images beginning with the letter P. Many times, she said we could only use images of people smiling. Sometimes she said we couldn't use photos of people at all...
Making a collage is great because it's fun, it's engrossing, and not terribly messy.
Decorating T-Shirts
For kids 5-10 years old
What you need:
You'll need a t-shirt and decorative objects like paint, beads, and ribbon. Have kids experiment with different designs before they start to squeeze paint and glue. Many tears were shed in my household when we messed up and there were no more t-shirts left to decorate.
This project was my sisters' favorite. They liked using their names as a motif. This activity is great because it can double as an opportunity for kids to make a gift for a family member. Our grandparents loved them.
And you don't have to limit it to t-shirts either. You can also decorate pillow cases, headbands, socks, and smocks.
Salt Sculpture
For kids 6-14 years old
What you need:
Pour some salt (about a quarter cup at a time) onto a sheet of clean paper and rub the salt with colored chalk. Slowly pour the colored salt into a clear jar. Rub salt with a different color each time to create layers. Tilting the jar while pouring slowly, will give the colored salt contours resembling mountains or hills.
This is a simple, cheap, and unusual way for kids to decorate and to keep them occupied. Be sure to have plenty of salt and glass jars, I don't think I was ever content making just one. Salt sculptures also double as homemade gifts.
Be careful when you move the completed sculptures, you don't want to upset the jar because the layers will mix.
I once showed a neighbor the art of salt sculpture and she was so good that she could embed a sun coming out of a mountain against a sky with a flock of birds (patience and lots of practice are necessary).
Happy decorating!
