Charlotte Mason Handicraft Ideas - What Children Learn from Arts/Crafts

Charlotte Mason is well-known for emphasizing that children should learn how to interact with their world. She advocated for the use of handicrafts for educating children and developing a support system for children as they grow into a young adult. She encouraged the development of life skills, essential for teaching children how to manage their own households one day.

Four main points should be kept in mind when you are deciding what handicrafts to incorporate with life skills development. These points are:

• The result of the product should be useful. Children should participate in activities that teach them skills needed in their everyday lives.
• Children should work on their projects carefully and slowly, so they learn the task well.
• Parents should place great emphasis on children putting forth the right amount of effort and developing healthy, helpful habits.
• Handcrafts should teach life skills, but should not be frustrating.

Value of Arts and Crafts Projects

Arts and crafts projects are a valuable teaching approach. Children learn valuable life skill lessons that will stick with them their entire life. The best part of arts and crafts is that a child can learn on their level. Contrast that with “being talked to” or taught directly. So what value do these arts and crafts projects provide your child?

What Your Children Learn from Arts and Crafts

Even though arts and crafts typically go hand in hand, they are completed through different processes. Art utilizes a different mental concept. It involves completing an unstructured activity that allows children to explore concepts with their imagination. Crafts are a structured project with a specific, predictable goal in mind.

Learning Imagination and Self-Expression

When children are participating in arts and crafts, they can build their creativity and imagination while receiving strong stimulation. They can use their imagination to create vivid paintings and express themselves with both color and brush strokes. They can learn about various types of symbolic communication by using varied colors to communicate their feelings to those who view their art.

The Ability to Learn Individual Craftsmanship

When you present a child with different arts and crafts projects, you enable them to develop their own interests. After they have gravitated in on their interests, they can focus their time on working on important skills in this area. As a child improves their skills, they will be able to look at past accomplishments and strengthen their skills through the process of refinement.

Strengthening Academic Subjects

If arts and crafts are integrated into the academics your child is focusing on, they can gain additional benefits. Math and literature concepts may be easier to understand because they can supplement their knowledge with different concepts they have picked up during their crafts experiments.

Being able to draw a picture or create a sculpture of the information they are learning could strengthen their understanding of the material they are being presented with. Combine mathematics with other skills and their knowledge/comprehension of the other topics is reinforced.

Life Skills

As a child learns through the usage of arts and crafts, they are learning to develop their own process of visual communication. The child also builds stronger problem-solving skills, better fine motor skills, and various aspects of social skills. Creating items through various media allows children the ability to strengthen the acceptance of their own unique abilities. They will also develop a stronger ability to follow directions and how important directions are to the satisfaction experienced when creating an arts and crafts project.

Charlotte Mason Arts Ideas

When it comes to art projects, there is really no limit to what your child can do. Here are some great ideas for art projects from the Charlotte Mason learning approach.

• Beading
• Carving
• Ceramics
• Drawing
• Sketching
• Crocheting
• Embroidery
• Painting
• Gardening
• Iron sculpture
• Knitting
• Leather work
• Photography
• Quilting
• Robotics
• Weaving
• Fine woodwork

Charlotte Mason Life Skills Projects

Just like art, there are almost too many options for life skills projects. These projects teach your child many different abilities they will need to know in life. Here are some ideas:

• Mechanics
• Canning
• Baking
• Cleaning
• Cooking
• Washing laundry
• Performing CPR
• Organizing
• Learning to maintain the home

How Your Child Benefits

Children who are taught using the Charlotte Mason education approach develop more independence and an overall better life experience than children who are taught using other methods. They can care for a home much more proficiently than other kids, which translates positively into later life.