Craft
is included as a small part of the overall Guiding programme, in order to
develop two specific skills.
The
first is ‘fine motor skills’. In using
scissors to cut out shapes accurately, or using glue spreaders to paste just up
to the edge and not over, in manipulating pencil or paint brush to sketch
images, the girls are learning to minutely control their arms and fingers, and
develop their hand-eye coordination. So
any good craft activity will give them the opportunity to do things like draw
or paint freehand, sculpt or mould, or practice using tools like needles, saws,
scissors or planes accurately and dextrously.
And
the second is ‘artistic taste’. Learning
about design, colour, shape and form, and developing personal ideas and
opinions on them. To bring it down to
brass tacks examples, say you were making simple calendars. Flossie chose a piece of green card to attach
her picture and calendar tab onto, and now has to choose which colour of ribbon
she wants for the hanging loop – a choice of dark green, navy, red or
gold. So Flossie is looking at the
coloured card and at the ribbon choices available, and is judging for herself
which combination of colours she thinks will look best together – considering
colour and design in relation to her personal taste, and making her own
decisions, expressing herself and her personal tastes. Or say she is given a piece of black
cardboard and some wax crayons, and asked to draw a ‘firework picture’ – so she
has to think about what sort of firework shapes to have and in what position –
perhaps single rockets, perhaps spinning wheels, perhaps clusters or cloudburst
fireworks – maybe she might have a bonfire, or figures holding sparklers - or
perhaps not, it’s up to her to imagine the scene, consider what colours she
wants to use to portray it, and think about how to combine them in order to
produce an effect she will find pleasing.
Or say she is given a bar of soap and a penknife in order to whittle and
produce a carving, she has to think about what 3-d shape she wants to portray,
and then work out what needs to be pared away from the bar in order to
gradually reveal the shape which she is mentally picturing. In all these examples, every girl in the
group will have a slightly different vision of what she wants the outcome of
her work to be, and each will achieve a different result – but one she has
chosen for herself, and one which reflects her tastes and preferences. And those may be conventional tastes, or may
be quite original.
There
are a limited number of products available from the ‘craft kit companies’ which
do support these educational aims. Most
will indeed supply bulk stocks of paper and card, paint and chalks, coloured
pens and crayons, and other basic/generic resources to stock your craft
box. And a few of their kits also take
some slight steps towards supporting the aim – those where they supply a
pre-selected object to decorate, but give the individual some freedom to decide
on a decoration scheme, using the 4 or 6 colours of paint provided. There is heavy restriction in that the object
for decorating is in a predetermined form, and the choice of colours limited to
only 4-6 which can’t necessarily be mixed in order to offer some variety of
shade - but there is a little freedom.
Far
too many, however, advertise large numbers of craft kits which offer no choice
or scope for taste at all, they are just a form of ‘painting by numbers’. In such packs the colour scheme for every
component and aspect has already been pre-chosen, and every piece has already
been cut out, allowing little or no scope to deviate from the designer’s
choices, and certainly no encouragement to do so. If you choose to make the blue rabbit, then
you are supplied with a green bow, if you choose the pink rabbit it’s a white
bow. The decision has already been made
for you, you weren’t consulted. All you
get to do is assemble the pieces the designer chose and cut out, in the colour
scheme they chose. And as a result,
almost all the potential educational benefits the craft activity could have
had, are lost. The girls aren’t getting
to be creative, they just assemble other people’s work. Worst of all – we invariably pay a premium
for these pre-pack kits, compared to the cost of buying the component
materials, despite the reduced benefits!
Of
course it takes longer to make the craft if each child gets to choose options,
and cut out her own components. Of
course it can mean using more stuff if we buy enough to offer a choice rather
than dish out a pre-selected set of parts in the colour scheme we choose. Of course it means more work and mess if we
make templates and supervise the girls drawing round and cutting out, before
they start assembly. And if we give the
girls freedom to paint a picture of their choice, or invent and create an
object from a selection of scrap - then we also have to allow time for them to
think up ideas and design their creation as well as construct it. So yes, naturally that will restrict what can
be achieved in an hour’s meeting. Yes,
we could make it far quicker on the night if the adults did all the cutting out
beforehand – the adults are quicker because we got the very practice we’re now
denying the girls. Units should only do
craft a couple of times a term anyway, as craft is only one among several of
‘The Arts’ and the arts but a small part of the overall programme alongside
outdoors, relationships, self-development and all the rest of the topics we
cover. So no reason why we couldn’t
spread the activity over 2 weeks, or aim for something simpler which can be
fitted into the unit’s meeting time, but which the child can honestly say is
“all my own work” not “someone else’s work really, I just stuck it together for
them”.
As an
educational charity, shouldn’t we be focussing on drawing out the maximum
educational benefits from the activities we do, and on making the time to let
the girls get full advantage, rather than give in to temptation and just take
that expensive, easy-way-out, the pre-packaged craft kit?
