craft day

Friday is Craft Day.

   Each of our weekly afternoon activities are pretty specific and we do essentially the same kind of thing each time around.  Craft Day though encompasses a really broad spectrum of projects, occasionally gets a little weird and often is very messy.  In our case, "crafts", generally speaking, deviate from the routine paint, paper and crayons that we use all the time but can include such typical elements as glue and glitter.  More often they're even more unconventional.  We have used this day for pouring candles, whipping up a new batch of play dough, sewing, paper folding, fabricating lanterns, felting, finger knitting, sticker art, papier-mâché or even making bird feeders.  Basically, it's a day for all the interesting things we think to do that don't fit into the formats of the other days of the week.  A lot of times we do our seasonal crafts to add to the Nature Table on Friday or, if we're impressively organized, we'll put together gifts for upcoming birthdays and whatnot.  

   Today was rather ordinary for a Craft Day.  Naiya wasn't even interested in adding glitter or beads or sparkles to our project and fundamentally, all we did was paint.  We've had these houses for a while now and she's been wanting to decorate them to add to the growing neighborhood in the fairie garden.

   After we finished the houses she got really interested in color combining and brought out some paper she found in the supply cabinet.  After mixing colors on the pages, she folded them in half, pounded on them with a stone and declared them beautiful.  They really are, and the idea came completely from her.  This is the magic of free art.