Creative Classroom Projects: Incorporating Crafts into Learning

If you’re a teacher, it can be all too easy to fall into the trap of planning formulaic lessons that focus solely on the development of new skills without considering exciting and engaging ways to put them into practice. Paired conversations or learning from a whiteboard can only hold your students’ interest for so long, even if you’re working with adult learners.

One of the best ways to make your lessons more fun and accessible to a wide range of learners is to incorporate arts and crafts into your lesson plans. Creative activities can be a key tool for helping learners develop their skills effectively.

Why Plan Creative Crafts Into The Curriculum?

Participating in creative activities can boost children’s learning ability, but crafts offer benefits that extend far beyond the grade school classroom. For instance, when teaching English to speakers of other languages of all ages, incorporating activities into the curriculum that enable learners to use their creative skills to reinforce their knowledge can help massively consolidate what they have learned. Even simple art-related lessons can support students’ retention of useful vocabulary and help them practice forming English sentences in the correct way without even seeming to be another onerous writing task.

How To Implement Craft Activities In The Classroom

Implementing craft activities can seem stressful, but the key lies in good organization and a clear plan. Knowing what you want your learners to achieve is the first step; then, all you need to do is have a good understanding of how to help them achieve their goals. 

Preparation 

• Make sure that all the materials you need are ready and easily accessible so that your students can get started without any problems. 
• Have clear instructions that your learners can follow easily so there’ll be no confusion or frustration. 
• If learners need to work in pairs or groups, make sure these have been organised before starting the activity to save time. 

During The Activity

While your learners are working on the craft activity, you should make sure to interact with them regularly throughout the class to ensure they’ve grasped the concept and aren’t struggling.

• Check-in with individuals to ensure that they don’t have any issues. Not all learners feel confident asking for help, so approaching them first can make it easier for them to make requests. 
• Use this one-to-one time to assess your students’ learning and as an opportunity to not only find out what they know but also to expand their learning. 

Afterwards

When the activity is complete, make sure that your learners tidy away everything that they’ve used during the lesson. You can then use the remaining time to talk about their work – what they enjoyed, what they found difficult, and what they think of their own work, and perhaps the work of others. 

A How-To Guide To Craft Activities 

Origami Animals

Making origami animals is a great way to teach animal names and encourage the use of descriptive language. Many printables are available online explaining how to make different papercraft creatures, and minimal resources are needed—only paper and coloring pens. Once each student has folded their paper into their given animal, the rest of the group should be able to use their English skills to name the animal and describe it using appropriate vocabulary, such as body part names and adjectives. 

Plasticine Foods

Let your students get hands-on with some play dough or plasticine, making a variety of food items that they can then use during shopping role-play activities. Providing a range of colours and perhaps some modelling tools will be enough to unleash their creativity in this fun task. 

Step-By-Step Crafts

Your learners can practice their reading skills with step-by-step drawing activities. Provide each student with a simple instruction sheet explaining the materials they need and the method to follow to create a picture, model, or other piece of artwork, but without telling them what the final outcome will be. The idea of the activity is to work out what the final piece represents by reading and then following the steps correctly. 

Sock And Spoon Puppets

A fun, creative lesson can involve making hand puppets to use during role-play and storytelling activities. These can be made easily and cheaply using old socks or wooden spoons, and by glueing on scraps of material, odds and ends like buttons, wool, colourful threads, sequins, and glitter. 

While this is a fantastic activity for younger learners, it’s just as much fun for adults. The puppets they create can then be used for a wide range of purposes, from practising descriptive language to developing partnered and group conversations and role plays. 

Peg Dolls

Traditional-style wooden pegs make excellent dolls for small-world play and storytelling activities. Easy to make, these pegs can be turned into all kinds of crazy characters by simply using pens to create faces, material scraps for clothing, and wool to glue on for hair.

Card Making 

  Making cards for seasonal occasions is a fun and practical activity that can be used throughout the year. Cardmaking allows you to really push your own and your learners’ creative boundaries. Depending on the age of your learners, you can use finger paints, cut and stick pictures, felt, dried pasta, sequins, glitter, and more for decoration, or for more advanced or skilled students, you could even create three-dimensional or pop-up cards. Not only will this activity help your learners develop their motor skills, but it can be used to support their writing development too.

Creative Learning Benefits Everyone

Using creative crafts as part of your regular classroom lessons can be a highly effective way to support learning of a wide range of topics, but more than that, they’re a great way to keep your learners enthused and engaging with the subject matter, too. When your students are enjoying their lessons, you’ll enjoy teaching even more, so everyone wins! 

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