Competition Entries

Our recent colouring competition evidently proved quite a challenge, however there are some great entries that have been submitted. Thank you to all our young entrants. The way that you have paid attention to the details and the vivid colours that you have used has really impressed The Crafti Bug. Great effort!

The hardest part is always in the judging, however despite getting all these entries, only one entrant met the entry criteria; being for children ages 4 - 8 years of age. Our winner is Saxon from Oxford, aged 6. He has used some great imagination with The Crafti Bug. Saxon, we'll be sending you a 4M Hover Jet!

Gizmo Generation

Ask almost any child what they want for Christmas and they will more than likely tell you about the latest electronic gizmo that has the coolest graphics, high resolution camera, internet capability, wireless functionality, connectability or some other high-tech feature. They have seen it on TV, or in the flyers that came through the letterbox, or their friends have got one. Of course there is no pressure to conform with everyone else, except being told, 'But I'll be the only one without one!' This sort of appeal is great for the IT businesses, since by the time you have purchased your product, it will have been superseded by a new model, or a competitor product, which is going through the final testing stages for the next release. 

Children are attracted to technology for a number of reasons. 

• They want to mimic their parents. If they see you using technology, they want to too, because you are the ones that they look up to and want to be like.
• Flashing lights, bright colours and unusual sounds attract attention. Even as adults we tend to look around when we hear unfamiliar sounds, because we want to know what it is, what's making it and where it is coming from. Lights and sounds stimulate children and so handling technology seems rewarding.
• Generally modern technology is small, light and easy for children to handle. There are not many activities that children can do today that pack so much mental stimulation into such a small package.

But the question that begs to be asked is: Is such exposure to high-tech products good for our children?

Without being unduly harsh, there are some really fantastic electronic devices available. Some programmes have been really well designed to help children learn in an exciting and interactive manner. The sights and sounds capture the imagination of the child and hold there attention while they work there way through the activity, but there is a foreseeable problem. While these devices do really engage children, they soon become yet another 'toy,' something that you can just drop when you are bored.  From that point of view educational tools may be put down when a child has 'had enough.' Alternatively, it may be the other aspect that children will not want to look at educational applications, because they are gripped by the entertainment aspect of the device.

With technology so accessible and able to be switched around from education to entertainment so easily, children will often opt for entertainment, because it is less mentally taxing. The result is that a powerful educational aid, may be neglected in favour of the toy aspect. Secondly, children start to believe that there is plenty of time to get education, because there are educational applications everywhere and they can take it or leave it as they wish. Thirdly, the low entry cost of technology now also means that some children are losing the real sense of value and they can throw things away for a new one when a better one comes along.

Technology while it has its benefits also has other costs. Not only is there the social cost associated with production, such as automation leading to a lower employment cost, there is also a social cost related to the user. Many electronic gizmos are captivating with their classy appearance and captivating graphics, but take it from another angle, how does it affect our attention span and sense of value? One could argue it is great, because people will spend hours on these devices. Very true, and writing this I feel just as guilty typing on the computer, while the kids are sorting out some summer clothes! But take away the technology and people generally become bored very quickly. Give them something that does not have an image that changes every few seconds and they will complain that it is boring. Our minds are constantly hankering for stimulation and the more stimulation they get, the better we feel.

Unfortunately not all stimulation is good for us. Too much stimulation and we find it difficult to rest. Too much light before going to sleep upsets the hormones associated with our 'body clock.' Light causes the release of one hormone telling us it is day and time to be active, therefore too much light at night, and you start not sleeping well! Expose children to fast moving graphics, motion and light and they too become overstimulated and unable to rest effectively. Some suggest that this is not true, but there are two simple tests you can do to prove it for yourself. One way to test if this is true is to take a TV programme you like. When you are watching the programme, time how long each scene/ angle lasts. You will find that the more entertaining the programme is, the shorter the scenes or angle shots are, many no more than 5 seconds, most are only a few seconds long. One result is that you become conditioned to having a shortened attention span.  The other is to watch something quite bright just before going to sleep. Often your mind will be recalling images of what you have seen, over and over and you will probably find it hard to settle. Likewise children with so many choices through interactive high-tech activities now have a significantly reduced attention span of less than 5 minutes, compared to children a generation ago that had an attention span of 20 minutes. 

Socially the cost of IT has also undermined the value of people. There are tremendous advantages of IT, but at the same time, children (and even adults) lose the sense of value of things because it doesn't blink, beep, connect to the internet, or give them wireless capability. Technology enables things to happen in nanoseconds, but that is not how the real world operates. Many traditional toys don't have the same stimulating appeal to children and because technology is cheap, it is believed that everything else should be cheaper, but just because something doesn't have all the bells and whistles does not mean that it should be cheap and disposable. We need to start re-learning the value of people and things. We need to bring ourselves back to the real world a world that isn't frantic, even if it is stimulating. We need to take time to slow down and take stock of the real world in which we live. We need to practice the art of being still as much as we need to stimulate our minds. Our children need to learn the value of people and things so that they grow to have respect of the people and things around them. Maybe we need to hold back on some of the electronic tools we have to re-evaluate the real value in life. Sometimes we need to take time and to use the Mainland Cheese adage "Good things take time!" If we want the best for our children, the absolute best they can have is quality time.

Colouring Debate

Time to get your Crafti Bug Colouring Entries in!

If you know of someone between 4 and 8 years of age let them know that they have up until 5.00pm tonight (10 October 2012) to get their colouring competition entry in (Get your entry form here). We will be posting entries here (with only one name to identify entrants).

The Colouring in Debate...

Colouring is a great way for children to learn a number of skills. Some criticise colouring suggesting that it stifles creativity because children don't get the opportunity to express their own creativity having the freedom to draw their own freehand pictures. This statement is a valid to a point, in that a child does have to follow the lines of the image; a pre-set structure. However creativity is more than freehand drawing. Children need some structure initially to learn proportions, but the structure provided by the colouring page helps in many other ways.

Detail

Give a young child a colouring in sheet and they will initially start scribbling all over it creating their 'masterpiece.' However, take time to show them how to start by following the lines slowly and carefully with one colour until they had filled the region surrounded by the black line and before long they learn how to stay within the lines to create some amazingly detailed pictures, all neatly coloured. We did this with our eldest child and at the age of three she was able to stay within the lines of detailed pictures, unfortunately however, people in disbelief stated that she should not get others to help her; a severe blow for one who was doing some amazing work! People simply did not believe it possible for a three year old to do, until they watched her do it.

Concentration

By focusing on the details, children increase their attention span because they spend a lot of effort concentrating on following the lines and understanding where the boundaries of colours lie. Children that are intently concentrating on their work are not so easily distracted by the events occurring around them. This can be a good thing for children, especially when there may be issues in their lives, which may be stressful. By giving a child something to concentrate on, it helps to distract the child from such events, and can help the child divert his/ her emotions into something constructive and relaxing.

Fine Motor Skills

Because children need to follow prescribed details in colouring pages, they learn to control the movement of their arms, hands and fingers. As details of the colouring page become more complex, the movements required to colour them become finer and the child, in desiring to stay within the line, will develop these fine motor skills quickly. Furthermore, having followed prescribed lines, children learn how to draw shapes and develop a sense of proportion. Eventually they are able to make their own additions to coloured images, completing some lines where lines may have been 'cut off.'

Colours and Colour Co-ordination

Although colouring generally does not encourage blending of colours, although nothing prevents it if the child is able, children are able to learn how colours work together to create images that look good. Children don't take long, once they start working within the lines, to realise that the sky looks better blue and the grass green. Our middle child started taking this a step further and amazed us by being able to pick colours that worked incredibly well in clothing, simply because she had learned to co-ordinate colours that worked well while colouring.

Creativity

Because a colouring page has already established boundaries it does not rule out the freedom to express creativity. Firstly, children are able to express their creativity in the colours that they choose and they ways in which they may co-ordinate them. Secondly the intensity and stroke patterns that they use can help create different effects adding some creative flair. As children get older, they start to see that colouring in pages often eliminate detail to simplify the image. As a result older children start to add back details that they believe are missing, thus expressing a sense of interpretation of art and expressing creative ability.

Colouring in Pages Enhance the Development of Skills Necessary for Creativity

Colouring pages certainly don't allow the freedom of freehand drawing, but they are a tremendous tool in helping children to develop fine motor skills, learn about colours and how colours work together. They also work well to help children develop excellent concentration skills, focussing their attention on a single activity in a disciplined manner (guided by boundaries) and gaining an understanding of how to draw objects in proportion.

The criticism that colouring pages stifle creativity is flawed in the sense that each child will learn to express creativity in many different ways adding their own personal touches to make their page 'special.' Even children given the opportunity to draw freehand need some creative inspiration, just as children colouring in a page may do, but colouring pages help guide children to accomplish works of art that they can delight in when they still do not yet possess the skills to draw the same image freehand.

No News is Good News?

Still water if left too long becomes impossible to drink. Likewise a blog site left too long without something fresh becomes uninviting.

After 3 months at the helm of The Crafti Bug we are ironing out a number of our initial teething issues and we are looking forward to the future with considerable excitement. In April 2012 The Crafti Bug changed hands and in the process flew from Auckland to Darfield... quite a way for a little bug!!! However since it has been in Darfield it has started to go through a few minor changes. However since early June The Crafti Bug made a choice to pupate and though it is still live, there is something special going on in the wings.... The Crafti Bug is going to be re-launched with a whole new look. The same great products, with some extras, but easier to find and more to look at. We are also adding in some extra features, which will make it easier for you to find out what we are doing, or what specials are coming your way.

So what is going to happen here? What is a blog site about? A blog is somewhere that you can exchange ideas. We would like to make The Crafti Bug Blog site a place where you can get tips and ideas, or even try a few different science experiments. Occasionally we might throw in some news of exciting new products, but primarily we would like this to be a place where you can post your ideas or obtain ideas that fit with craft and education.

Head to facebook to follow our latest updates!

Straws no longer just for drinking

Dear Blog

Who knew that a box full of plastic straws could keep kids busy for hours, and I'm talking hours on end! 

With the weather being as it is over these holidays I upended the box in front of my two crafti testers one morning and left them to it.  These straws come with lots of little connector points which join all the straws together.  Before long they had built a jail big enough for them crawl into.  It even had a flag on the top.

Dad ventured home around lunchtime, and immediately joined in the action.  Not to be outdone by the jail his children had constructed, he proceeded to built a rather large tower with a triple helix as it's support structure, he had to climb to the top of the stairs to continue building the top of this tower.  Spot the engineer!

My three testers then made a rocket, some large balls, and the next morning I came down to find the lounge being turned into a zoo!.... They had constructed a large zoo entrance which you could walk through, along with cubes containing animals (granted these were stuffed animals, but animals none the less) scattered around the room.  I had to pay money to enter the zoo/lounge of course, it's lucky we had being playing Monopoly the night before, I managed to convince the kids that $1,000,000 note in Monopoly money was a fair enough entry fee.  It was that or chocolate and I'm not one to share my chocolate!

If you were looking at the learning aspect of these straws and connectors, our kids spent hours using their imagination and creative thinking to build different shapes.  They worked on their fine motor skills and hand eye co-ordination, which for our 4 year old, is something we're focusing on with him at the moment.  Overall Blog, they are a lot of fun.  The kids come back to them time and time again, creating new shapes to build. 

We have Straws and Connectors kits now available at http://www.thecraftibug.co.nz/, they come in 230 pieces or 400 pieces.   Until next time Blog..... keep on crafting.  

 

The Great Box Rescue of 2012

Dear Blog

As I write this to you, I'm sitting in a box.  Now to some this may be quite a normal occurence, however for me it seems to have become an occupational hazard.  It appears to have happened again, and I'm currently waiting on another rescue. 

We're expanding our Craft Supplies range and had some rather large boxes arrive just before Christmas.  You can imagine the level of excitement this caused in the Crafti Bug household.  Diving into the closest box was a great idea in theory, however the execution of it wasn't as graceful as I'd hoped.  Picture this folks, headfirst, closely followed by shoulders and waist, ending with feet poking out the top flayling madly. 

A successful rescue attempt was made, and goodies were finally expelled safely with no harm done.  Check some of these out!



Art Start Kits



Bouquet Paper





Coloured Alpha Noodles



We now have a great range of supplies to help with a multitude of projects, however at the current minute, as I repeated my swan dive into the 2nd big box, I'm still waiting on the Great Box Rescue of 2012.... can someone please send chocolate!

As always Dear Blog our goodies are available through http://www.thecraftibug.co.nz/, and until next time... keep on crafting.

Boys vs Girls - The Gender Wars

Dear Blog

It's been brought to my attention, in rather a harsh way I might add, that what is severely wrong with this country (New Zealand) is that girls are persuaded to love all things pink and fairy related, while boys are persuaded to love all things blue and dinosaur related.  I ask you dear blog world where is this written?

Without getting caught up in the whole mess of what is or isn't wrong with this country, I'd like to address the apparent issue (and this is one expressed opinion by one person), that the media are stereotyping our children into their genders, persuading girls down the pink road and boys down the blue road?  

Interesting issue I hear you say, but what does this really have to do with The Crafti Bug?  Well, apparently here at The Crafti Bug we are enabling this gender stereotyping by categorising our crafts into boys and girls rather than age related.  Now I rapidly pointed out to this person that our crafts are in fact categorised in girls, boys and age related groups, simply for the ease of our shoppers. 

But this got me to thinking, how could this possibly be considered a serious issue causing chaos in our country?  Are our children in fact being persuaded to like certain things?  Surely there are other serious things going on that are more worthy of our time.

Isn't this in our general make-up?  Already embedded into our subconscious?  Girls generally gravitate to pink and boys generally gravitate to blue, but nothing as far as I can tell stops our girls from venturing into the blue side or vice versa.

We have a pigeon pair in our Crafti household, and I can assure you that from no persuasion from us whatsoever, our daughter loves sitting down playing with trains with her brother, and our son will have no hesitation playing happy families or tea parties with the dolls and soft toys with his sister...

Honestly I was astounded that this was even raised as a contentious issue, but it was, and now I'm very interested to know if this is in fact a popular consensus?... are our media and large corporate conglomerates brainwashing our children into being a girlie girl and a rough and tumble boy?  I don't really expect an answer, just putting it into the blog world. 

On a personal note, our website will continue to be categorised into Boys and Girls along with the age appropriate groups, simply to make it easier for Nanna and Poppa, Mum and Dad, Aunts and Uncles, and all who seek our crafty goodies to find what they are looking for regardless of who it is for. 

So dear Blog thanks for listening and until next time... keep on crafting. 

New Year: Old Beginnings....

It's the 4th of January and I'm sitting here wandering about New Year's Resolutions and all those sorts of things you think about when all the celebrations come to an end.  I used to make lots of resolutions come the New Year, and I used vow that the new year would be a lot different from the last, however I've come to realise that things are going to happen regardless if you've made resolutions or not, and it's how we handle these things that make the year different from the last whether it be good or bad.

Anyway, the one Resolution we have made here at The Crafti Bug is to keep our blog updated more regularly so let's get stuck in.  We've got lots to tell you about....

Hands up those that remember playing string games in school.... I do I do....

My 6yr old daughter came home from school one day with a piece of wool drapped around her neck.  When I asked her what that was for she mentioned they were playing Cats Cradle, and she proceeded to make the Cup and Saucer (or so she thought it was the cup and saucer).  She then ploughed through the internet looking for instructions on how to do some of the games. 

That's when we came across this Cat's Cradle kit from Klutz.

Our daughter was going to be the very best person to test this for us, and when we handed her the book her eyes nearly popped out of her head.  It comes with a very cool colourful and sturdy piece of string along with step by step illustrated instructions on how to make the Witch's Broom, the Cup and Saucer, the Eiffel Tower, Jacob's ladder and how to play the Cat's Cradle game (which is a two person game). 

She sat down with the book and away she went, after reading through the instructions for each one she had them memorised and became very skilled at completing each one....let me show you what I mean...

I'm blowed if I could follow what she was doing, but I was very surprised how quickly she picked it up and has remembered them all.  She's taken the string to school and having a lot of fun with her friends, especially as they attempt to go through the Cats Cradle game.

All these things that I used to play as a child apparently never died, maybe I just outgrew them, but I must say it's fun reliving my childhood through my children.

This book is available through our website of course, so head on over to http://www.thecraftibug.co.nz/ and check it out.