As you can probably tell from my latest venture Let’s Do Something Crafty I’m a huge fan of crafting.
The fact I enjoy it means it’s the obvious choice of activity when I’m at home with the kids.
A lot of the things we do at the moment are for children but as they get older I plan to learn and experiment with all kinds of crafts. That’s the great thing about crafting, it is something that you can enjoy no matter what your age.
It’s great for little people because it teaches them to explore their creative side, Cherry quite frequently comes to me with a random object and an idea of what she wants to make with it. I also keep a supply of paper, pens, glitter etc on the table so she can just go and get making whenever she feels like it. Crafts also help young children to refine their motor skills, Cherry loves threading big beads onto thread to make her own necklaces.
Then it’s equally beneficial for older people. Crafting is a fun and productive way to spend your free time and it’s also great for helping people interact and make new friends. It can also help older people to maintain their co-ordination and small motor movements, things that naturally start to weaken with age.
Mr C’s mum worked in a care home a few years ago that knew the importance of crafts for their elderly residents, much like The Pines Care Home in Hove who make sure they include crafts and exercise into their weekly activity schedule. She was in charge of planning and running craft sessions for the residents and they absolutely loved it.
Here are a few crafts I found on Pinterest that I think would be great for the elderly…
This metal bucket has been transformed with decoupage.
This is a great tutorial for learning how to make basic felting shapes.
Christmas card making is a great one as it can be done whilst listening to festive music and eating mince pies. There are some great ideas on Pinterest including the ones below which I love and they are really simple to make as you just glue ribbon and paper on to card.
Crochet is something that a lot of older people know how to do already so the possibilities are endless, I know my gran found it harder to carry on once she started getting arthritis though so smaller projects like this are perfect as they don’t take too long.
And lastly painting is such a great way to be creative and allow people complete freedom over how they want the finished piece to look.
There are even some craft ideas that I would like to give a go on this list!
What’s your favourite type of craft?
This is a collaborative post.
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