help4yourfamily

A Craft For Your Family

While I like looking at other peoples crafts, I really do not like doing crafts.  Whenever people ask me about crafts, I have been known to tell them that glue and I do not get along.  Sometimes, however, my job or my own children call on me to be “crafty” and I need to set aside my glue issues and get down to crafting.  Since this week is about being unique, I wanted to share a craft with you that my daughter actually made up herself and shared with me when she was five and that I now do with my clients.

The craft is a container in which you can put reminders of happy times together, good memories, or reminders of things that make you smile.  My daughter made one for her teacher that had slips of paper in it that said things like “You are beautiful” and “You are a great teacher.”  I call it the rainy day jar, my daughter calls it the good feelings jar, but it can be easily adapted for many purposes.  The idea is to decorate a container then put slips of paper in it with things that make you smile or personal affirmations that you have made for you.  I tend to make one with my clients who are about to be adopted from foster care that they then present to their adoptive parents that contain positive thoughts about their parents or shared memories from before the adoption day.

Before you start, I want to say this can be as fancy or as plain as you wish.  I personally believe that each and every one of you is likely to have all the materials you need to make a nice jar in your home right now.  There is no need to spend any money on this craft.  Also, at some point during this activity, your child, like my child, or you, may think of some fabulous something that will make this project wonderful and unique!  They may pull out something that is very special but makes the project much more difficult.  Please do yourself a favor and keep it simple.  Unless you are crafty, redirect yourself or your child to get it done rather than making it a half-finished project that is going to sit on the table with all the materials out for the next week.  I always would encourage you to emphasize fun and sweet over perfect.

Items needed:

A container (any shoebox or jar you have is fine)

any crafty items you have around your house, ribbons, tissue paper, buttons (please use only items that you will not have to clean up later so you get irritated you did the project)

Paper

Scissors

1.  Decide who your container is for.  Is it for you?  Is it for someone else in your family or is it a family jar?  Make a vision for your container.

2.Decorate your container using your crafty stuff.  I used tissue paper.  My daughter used stickers and markers.  Remember, perfect is the enemy of good.

3.  Write little things that make you smile on pieces of paper.

They can be memories, thoughts, affirmations or anything that makes you smile.  My daughter wrote the word “Megatron.”  She wrote it to remind us of the time my nephew very seriously suggested to his mother that she name the baby she was going to have Megatron.  No one in my family can think of that with a straight face- except my nephew who still has no idea why that is not the best name ever.  Notice the misspelling of “Megatron” in the picture.  Put it in the jar just like that and smile when you see the unique way your child has spelled their words.  You do not have to fill the jar today.  You can fill it over time whenever you think of something to put in there.  I wrote myself a little note as a reminder of something that helps me feel better.

4.  When you are having a parental moment in which you feel like a failure or want to calm yourself down, take a piece of paper out of the jar and look at it.*  If that does not work, take another piece of paper out.  Make sure to replace them when you are done.

5.  Share with the rest of us.  What is going in your jar?

*A side note to parents with children who have a mean streak: put the jar where you have control over it so they can not use it as another thing to hurt you with by slipping a mean note in there.

July 11, 2012 - Posted by help4yourfamily | resources/ book reviews | Adoption, Child, Craft, Do it yourself