Craft and Hobby Site

Welcome back!

When you have kids, storage containers can’t be far behind. They are a simple system that can help them to stay organized in their rooms and play areas. Let the kids in on the act so they can learn that staying organized can be fun.

Kids like bright colors. Whatever the organizational structure in their room, incorporate color into it so they can make it their own. Speaking of rooms, kids also need a say in how their areas are designed, since they will be the ones occupying it.

To that end, try to get your kids involved in storage container art. This is the process of letting them decorate the organizational features of their room. This will also keep them from having the desire to draw on the walls and other surfaces that don’t need to be enhanced.

Encourage creativity in your child by giving them an outlet. When you help them to tidy up their area, bring a few special extras and the storage containers. Your kids will love you for it.

Clear an area to work. Show your kids the storage containers that they will use to keep their rooms clean. Before you start, let them choose what containers they want to use for their stuff. Start with two or three and then grab more as needed.

Lay out the special extras that you brought with you. Kids can decorate their containers with stickers, non-toxic paints, pictures, foam lettering and ribbons. Let them go wild. Resist the urge to straighten their stickers or correct their designs. It is for their stuff so it needs to look good to them.

Set aside a special place for the decorations so that your kids can grab and use them whenever they need to. Be sure that you reiterate that the stickers are not for the walls, but storage containers. But, just in case they get mischievous and one or two end up on the wall, use decals that are designed for walls instead of regular stickers for their container art. These can be removed and reapplied without ruining surfaces.

Once the containers are decorated, it is time to put something in them. Let your kids decide what toys will go in what container. Help them to move the containers to an area where they will stay permanently to keep their items off the floor.

Now, whenever you tell the kids it is time to clean up, they get to use their decorative containers. Cleaning before bed won’t be such a chore. You can even turn it into a game by letting them pick up each other’s toys and throw them in the right bin.

Use storage containers as a way to unleash your kid’s creative side and teach them responsibility at the same time.

There’s nothing quite like the morning sun streaming through the windows unless, of course, you have a sparkling sun catcher to catch the rays and spread a rainbow of color around the room. Sun catchers aren’t hard to make and they may be something your children would enjoy trying their hand at.

Sun catchers are easy to make. All it takes is some crafting wire, translucent colored beads, and fishing line. The benefit of using crafting wire is that you or your child can create any number of shapes with it. Your child can use their imagination to create butterflies, stars, birds, or anything their heart desires. They can even make completely abstract shapes if they prefer.

Your child can make a drawing and use that as the pattern to shape the wire, or they can find a picture out of a coloring book. The simpler the drawing and pattern, the easier it will be to create the desired shape. Your child may want to place circles, colored in with the color of the desired beads, on the drawing to show where the beads will be placed.

Do you want a simple sparkling sun catcher with only the outline of the drawing or do you want it to be more elaborate? You can use a larger gauge wire for the outline of the sun catcher and then use a smaller gauge wire for adding more colored glass beads. The choice is yours or your child’s – you can add as many pieces of wire as you like.

Parents will want to cut the wire to length rather than allowing children to do this step. You can then place one bead onto the wire and wrap the wire around the bead to keep it in place. Now it’s time to get the wire into the right shape by bending it.

Your child can begin threading the beads following the color pattern they made on their drawing, being sure to either put glue on either side of the bead or placed within the bend. They could also wrap the wire around the bead and then continue with the pattern. When the final bead is placed and you’re near the end of the wire, hook the end into the bead or wrap it around the bead to finish it off.

To display your sun catcher, cut a piece of fishing line long enough to hang it from a nail around the window or from a suction cup with a hook. Sit back and enjoy the beauty that your child helped to create. And when the sun gleams through your window, you can think back to the fun you and your child had making it.