03/04/2022
This perfectly sums up how I feel 🙂
I do occassionally send home planned crafts or cards but I prefer to let the children create their own artwork (which to us looks like a page of scribbles and splats) but to them it is their creation that they were able to create entirely by themselves using exactly what they wanted to use. And the best bit is… it is unique to them, not the same as any other childs artwork. 💗
ℂ𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕠𝕟’𝕤 𝕔𝕒𝕣𝕕 𝕗𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕪 ?
We often get asked the question “what do you do for Easter cards & crafts?”
To put it into two words “ we don’t !”
Here’s our full reply 🥰
Working in Early Years is a demanding yet rewarding experience, a career we got into for our love of children.
Sadly at times, it can feel that we are under pressure to produce items to send home in line with every festival, celebration or special date on the calendar.
So much so, we often feel like we are working in Clinton’s card factory, or at Moonpig, instead of Early Years.
Easter, valentines, Mothers Day Fathers Day, Eid, Ramadan, Diwali, Hannuka, Christmas, Happy New Year ! The list is blooming endless. 😱
Every term a new card, craft or product to conjure up, plan organise and ensure every child has participated in and ticked off the list!
It’s sadly become a conveyor belt of cards and crafts for children to take home. When did it become so product orientated ? When did it become a necessity to create ‘Pinterest worthy stuff to plan every season?
What if we told you, that working in an Early Childhood setting is not merited by how elaborate the Easter card or Creation.
Our professional success is not measured by our ability to mass produce 30 footprint chickens or Easter Bunnies, readily cut out, stuck and finalised by the end of term! 🐣
It’s completely OK to shut up the card manufacturing shop and turn off the conveyor belt machine. 🙏🏼
To give children the autonomy to create, draw and design if they choose to. Give them the freedom to stick, scribble and glue, whenever they please & not because it’s expected something should go home!
It’s OK to tear up the pre planned timetables, lists and tick sheets.
If a child wishes to create they’ll create something, therefore let us, let go of traditions whereby every season our settings becomes awash with cloned activities that are cute identical and decided by the adult, cut out by the adult and orchestrated by the adult too ( where children are passive in their involvement )
“Whose card is it anyway ?”
We have used the term ‘craptivities’ before and stand by the terminology.
Crap meaning waste - It’s a ‘waste’ of the adults time and most certainly the child’s.
The majority of Parents and carers want to see their child’s OWN creation, not something that’s identical to every other child’s card in the class.
Many may argue that footprints are a wonderful keepsake, a moment in time to treasure long after the child has grown.
We are not against hand & footprint paintings!
But this should be through FREEDOM, sensory expression, exploration of a medium, a process and not so an adult can cut out the print when dry & transform into a funny caricature. Drawing features and making it look ‘cute!’
Time to shut up the card shop?
Time to release ourselves and the children from the expectation to create something at every eventuality.
Especially, if what they create is a mass produced carbon copy, identical to every single other child’s creation too!
“ whose imagination is it anyway?”
Have you read our blogs?
https://www.thecuriosityapproach.com/blog/stop-the-craptivities?
https://www.thecuriosityapproach.com/blog/is-it-cuteness-or-a-human-printing-press
As always we pose reflective questions and recognise everyone is on their own professional journey. Let’s ponder consider and ask the question. Why do we do what we do and is it time for change ? 🤔
Want to know more about The Curiosity Approach ? We have a Curiosity Approach practitioner course starting in July 🎉
https://curiosityapproach.lpages.co/practitioner-course/
Or why not embark on becoming an accredited setting? We open our doors later this month 🙌🏼🎉
https://www.thecuriosityapproach.com/accreditation
