Wanting to add some craft fun into our daily routine this summer, I picked up a used copy of Around the World Art & Activities: Visiting the 7 Continents Through Craft Fun .

I was drawn (no pun intended) to the idea of learning more about world cultures and their arts and crafts and it seemed like a great way to give some structure to our mornings. I’d assemble our materials and then we’d come to the table and sing through the Continent Song and do our activity. If applicable, I’d print out images and other resources to enhance the activity (i.e. photos of Alaskan totem poles when we made our own totem poles).

Here’s what I liked about the book:

  • The supply list is pretty basic. Lots of cereal box and toilet paper roll repurposing.
  • Most of the activities are simple enough for my crew.

However, that’s about where my list of “likes” ends. And I hate to say that! I really really wanted to love this book. I think part of my problem was uninformed expectations. I expected that we would be doing crafts from around the world. This book has you do crafts about the world. Does that make sense? Let me show you some examples of projects we worked on to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about.

Making our cardboard "suitcases" to take on our trip around the world. The kids loved their little cases, but they were kind of a pain to put together.

Monkey modeling one of the projects for North America--the torch from the Statue of Liberty.

Pearl's dinosaur (again from North America). And, actually, I kind of made this activity up myself based on one found in the book. I just found a dinosaur skeleton coloring page online, cut it up into pieces, and had them assemble their own dinosaurs.

Sorry--I guess I mostly took pictures of our North America activities. Here's Pearl with her Everglades alligator hatching out of a paper plate egg.

The activities are meant to teach the kids something about places around the world–and they do. Whenever we see a Statue of Liberty image, Monkey recognizes it and gets excited. And Pearl really enjoyed creating something every day and having that structure. I guess I was just hoping to be doing more “traditional” crafts. As I review the book’s contents in my mind, it does have some of this kind of work. We made papel picado and you can make Aboriginal bark paintings out of construction paper and paper bags. In the end, I just got bored with it. After so many paper towel roll crafts, you just lose interest, I guess. I do want to make it clear that I am the one who lost interest. The kids, as far as I could tell, were still enjoying the activities. But since I’m the one organizing the activity and making it happen, I think it’s kind of important for me to be engaged and excited.

So, I’m still on the hunt for my ideal book of crafts to do with the kids. Maybe I need to get my First Art book out again and have some less structured art time with the kiddos. Maybe it’s not “crafts” that I’m hungry for at all.

If you’d like some crafty ideas to teach geographical concepts, you’ll probably like this book. And if you live in my neighborhood (you know who you are) and would like to give it a try, I’m more than happy to share my copy.

Related Posts