Imagination
Recently my daughter sent me a picture of her girls’ craft creations. Children amaze me with their creative experiments. Of course, it is important to supervise them and show them how to use tools. These girls are nine years old and seven years old. They had been watching their older brothers create felt cartoon characters, so decided to make their own craft creations.
Mermaids and Felt
Children love mermaids, so they make a great project, and they are drawn to crafts and usually want to participate. My daughter’s children are always making things, and their favorite material is felt. However, when given the opportunity, they will also cut up old tee-shirts or scraps of materials to create toys. Television and games are not their main activity for any day, and it is paying off as they learn useful skills, although they often get ideas from video games and cartoons.
Memories
When I was six, I was already fascinated by sewing. I remember some women taught my mother how to make a coat for a child from an adult’s coat. They never wasted anything. Then someone gave me a toy sewing machine. It sewed! I sewed everything in sight. Unfortunately, I created a the tangled mess in my mother’s sewing box, so the box and machine disappeared. I went on to other activities like playing with my brother, and the activities changed to cowboys, marbles, and fort building. But playtime is a child’s work, and the sewing machine was not forgotten. Children who know how to play and use their imagination also do better in school.
Children go through stages and not exactly in the same way, so make age appropriate materials available and encourage them to make something. For those who need a mermaid, there is one below to use. Here is what you need:
- felt in various colors
- fabric glue or a glue-gun and glue-gun glue
- scissors
- thread and needle if sewing
Mermaid
This is an example of a finished mermaid using the pattern above.
