Hello and welcome!
I’m Emma, the paint splattered mum behind the scenes here on Kids Craft Room and I’m delighted to have you here with us. I’m sure you value children’s creativity as much as I do so we’ll have lots to share and talk about. I’ll get started by telling you a little about Kids Craft Room, its aims, its history and the family behind it, and then you can relax with a cuppa and enjoy exploring the site!
Kids Craft Room’s Aims
Here at Kids Craft Room I love sharing inspirational art and craft ideas to enjoy with children throughout the year. I’m passionate about providing quality child centred activities to promote self expression, self esteem and creativity across the age ranges. In our increasingly technology filled world I aim to share inspiring ideas that help us as busy parents, childcare professionals and educationalists to promote a more hands on, fun and free-range childhood.
On Kids Craft Room I truly believe that the value of creative activities with children is in the hands-on explorative process and most definitely not in the finished product.
There is no right or wrong, there is only exploration, experimentation, self expression and creativity!
On this site I share a great mix of art and crafts and I show a lot of photographs of the finished pieces. I totally understand that sometimes we want our children to produce a particular piece, perhaps they are being a frog in the school play for example and a frog mask is just what you need, but I really hope that in the main, our ideas and photographs will be viewed purely as examples of the direction a craft can be taken in.
I hope that our posts will be viewed as starting points to explore a technique or an idea in a way that is purely unique and meaningful to you and your child. Perhaps they’ll paint their frog mask pink, perhaps they’ll cover their flower in black paint, perhaps they’ll want to chop up all the ribbons on their homemade kite? I hope they do, truly!
Children need the space to experiment and create in their own way. To assist and support the creative process our role as adults is to provide resources and ideas that children can then take the lead with. Let’s not get caught up in wanting a finished product, let’s not get caught up with wanting it to look ‘just so’, let’s allow ourselves to step back and let the children create!
A Little About The Family and Kids Craft Room’s History
I’m Emma, a mum of three and an experienced primary school teacher and early years specialist. I’ve loved working with children from birth to tweens and their families, for over twenty years. How time flies!
My youngest son was born profoundly deaf and with motor skills delay and autism. I moved away from full time teaching to be at home as much as possible to support his learning. It’s been an amazing and life changing journey for the whole family and I am so proud of all my children! Here’s a picture of my two boys, Biscuit and Crumb with their big sister Cupcake. The dog actually isn’t ours and belongs to a friend but I just love this photo so much, it really seems to capture their personalities.
I started writing at “My Little 3 and Me” at the end of 2012 where I shared a range of children’s play activities and crafts. I was actually first encouraged to start writing and sharing the activities I was doing at home by friends and colleagues. I thought it was a lovely way to record our family life and I never dreamt that my little site would be viewed by anyone other than family. I really couldn’t believe it when it quickly became an award winning blog taking the Bibs Blog Award for Best Craft in 2013 and becoming a finalist for the MAD Blog Awards in both 2013 and 2014! Sometimes life takes you down paths you never thought you’d tread!
Two years later in 2015, after much deliberation, I felt the time had come for me to leave behind the name My Little 3 and Me and rename our site Kids Craft Room as we had become so dedicated to children’s art and craft.
In my day to day life I have a new adventure happening too as I’ve recently shaken off my city roots and moved to a 200 year old countryside cottage. It’s been a dream of mine forever and I keep pinching myself to check that it’s actually real! We all love it here and the children are benefitting so much from having a garden to run around in and I’m busy developing DIY skills I never imagined and engaging in an eternal battle with the weeds!
I’m delighted you’re here with me and look forward to getting to know you.