Art Photo Music

Throughout the years of my career as a social worker I have found myself doing many different tasks. Some of the tasks have been difficult, some fun, some educational and others emotionally draining. The sum of all the things that I have done an learned throughout the years still has me believing in man kind even though at times it is hard not to be cynical. When I find my head and heart hardening to humanity I know it is time to interact with children. Children have a way of lifting my spirits and restoring faith to my heart.

I have run a number of groups for children. Some have been therapy groups with teenagers; others have been therapy groups for young victims of sexual abuse. Most recently I am involved in doing a play group with four year olds preparing them for kindergarten. The children I am working with are living with their parents in a supportive housing situation. Prior to coming to our program the children were homeless and living in shelters and moving from one relative to the next. All this moving does not leave a great deal of time for just being a kid and learning the basics needed to make it in kindergarten.

I run the group with an early education teacher. She sticks to the colors, numbers and alphabet. I get to concentrate on the crafts for children portion of the day. This has been a very interesting learning experience for me. I do not have a great deal of experience with crafts for children. I enjoy doing a number of crafts myself, but these are not the types of activities that four year olds would be good at. I needed to find some ideas for crafts for children that would be interactive and fun for them to do. The early education teacher was asking me to tie in the craft time with the theme for the day. Each day she had a theme to help teach the children different things. She would have color days and different letter days. Each thing she would do that day would tie in the theme.

One of the crafts for children that I found was a great recipe for play dough. I told the teacher that I would dye the play dough the color of the day. The kids would help measure and stir and then we would make different shapes. Each child would then be able to take their play dough home with them. The children thought this was great fun and they also were able to continue playing at home. I have come up with other crafts for children, but my favorite so far has been the play dough.