a picture to colour is not a craft
why every craft I draw has to slide, open, turn or hide something. and why my kids are the toughest quality control I've ever worked with.
- ages
- 3–8
- time
- one afternoon, roughly
- mess level
- some scraps
- you need
- a printer, scissors, a glue stick
at a glance
the five-minute problem
You print a colouring page. Your child colours a third of it, writes their name upside down and leaves. Five minutes, start to finish. Then the page lives on the kitchen table for a week.
Nothing wrong with colouring. But it isn't a craft. A craft is something you make, and then use.
the rule
Every craft I draw has to do one thing: slide, open, turn or hide something. The carrots slide out of the soil. The onion opens layer by layer until you find the sprout. The worm comes out of the apple, and goes back in. And back out.
That one movement turns "I made it" into "watch this". And "watch this" is what keeps a child playing long after the glue is dry.
five things a moving craft needs
- one mechanism. not three. a 4-year-old can follow one idea.
- cuts from the edge. no holes you have to stab from the middle with the tip of the scissors.
- big pieces. child scissors are short. so is child patience.
- pieces drawn twice when you need two. nobody wants to trace a second wheel at 5 pm.
- a reason to move. a worm sliding behind a window for no reason isn't a craft, it's a slider. the movement has to mean something: find, count, grow, hide.
the test
Every craft gets made at my kitchen table first, with my own kids. If they wander off before it's finished, it goes in the bin. If the instructions confuse them, I rewrite them. If a mechanism only sort of works, it's out.
where to start
The easiest way to see what I mean is to try one. A Worm in My Apple is free: one slit, one worm, a lot of pulling.
If it's a hit, Pull, Peek & Grow has 11 more from the vegetable patch, and every single one moves.
that's it. go find the scissors.
send this to a parent who needs a quiet afternoon