WINSTON WEEKLY©[1]

August 17, 2025

Vol. 3, No. 33

CRAFTY CLASSROOMS[2]

Crafty classrooms involve students in more than just interesting art projects. Depending on the age and nature of available and appropriate crafts, crafts foster collaboration, critical thinking, patience, concentration, and fine motor skills. From learning design and building with the use of foam or construction paper to working with wood, screwdrivers, and hammers, crafts are essential throughout school and life.  

Even before children are a year old, they are engaged in sensory development. Sensory play includes smell, taste, touch, sound, and sight. Those early connections provide the foundation for preschool and kindergarten, where students often mix and match colors and start creating projects with playdough or with brushes, paint, and water. By first grade, many children can work on crafts independently, enhancing patience and concentration.

By third or fourth grade, students may combine art, science, and health education through projects such as sun prints or chromatography color experiments.  In junior high and high school, students are involved with collaborative murals, resin or string art, wood burning, or blackout or erasure poetry. With roots in the 18^th century, blackout poetry involves blacking out existing text from a poem or newspaper and creating a new poem from the remaining words.  

THIS WEEK’S ACTIVITY

If you have a young child in your life, keep a notebook of their journey in sensory development. For those with older children or nieces or nephews, explore ways to enhance their critical thinking skills, concentration, fine motor skills, and patience through craft projects, or help your local school or after-school program with crafty classrooms.

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[1] A Sunday newsletter and blog by Alysen Bayles to be shared with the appropriate attribute.

[2]Resources: https://foxwellforest.com; 

https://childrensmedicalgroup.net; Museum of Teaching and Learning, https://www.motal.org; https://sunprints.org; Austin Kleon, Newspaper Blackout, Harper Perennial, 2010. Michael Nyers, Finding Light in the Darkness: A Collection of Blackout Poetry, Dawn Valley Press, 2018. Parents, grandparents, caregivers, and teachers should always be mindful of not only what is age-appropriate, but also appropriate for individual students.