Arts and Crafts

You know that arts and crafts project where you take a ball of foil, cover it in a tissue, tie a string around it, and it becomes a ghost? The unfortunate, sick, and twisted of you will have no idea what I'm talking about. I still remember when my babysitter showed me and my sisters that lil' trick.

I've been trying to think of enjoyable arts and crafts projects for my kindergartners. Friday is art day, and while they each have their own sketchbooks, complete with an art lesson for each week, it's always a struggle to figure out which lesson to do. They all have their favorite; they all beg me to pick the one they want. And painting is normally a blast, but with kindergartners they spend 10 minutes getting their stuff--from the palette to the paints to the water container to these plastic cuffs which keep their sleeves clean--then they need at least 15 minutes to clean up all that jazz. (They insist on using soap to clean watercolor paints--ahh!) Hence, when all's said and done, they can only paint for about 5 minutes of the 40-minute period. It's ridiculous. And my job isn't as an art teacher; I become a policemen or a referee. I just try to keep them on task and away from the sink.

So, as I was searching for some art project which could jive with our Halloween theme*, I suddenly remembered the ghost craft. It was a huge success (till my class decided to launch their ghosts across the room and almost hit each other in the eyes).

I hung their beautiful art projects on the window sill in one of my classes, and found out later from one of the other teachers that we had inadvertently participated in a Japanese tradition. Apparently, they hang ghosts on the window to keep the rain away. Children will do this before a big field trip in the hopes that the sun keeps shining. Sounds like a good idea to me. I wonder if it works on gloomy thoughts and feelings, in addition to weather....

*I am starting to realize that holidays and all the pizazz that comes with them are perpetuated by elementary school teachers who are just looking for some underlying themes to keep their classrooms decorated and things interesting for their students. It all makes sense.