Passive Programming: Clear Out the Craft Room

The kids in our school district had the whole week off for spring break so with that in mind, I knew we would need to offer a few programs to keep them busy.  We had a screening of the ever-so-popular Minions with quite a large audience on Tuesday evening and on Wednesday we hosted a Spring Break Party.
I was originally going to plan a specific program for the party, but then realized that we had a ton of leftover craft supplies that weren’t enough to complete a specific project with a large group of kids, so we had a Crafternoon!
This has to be one of the easiest programs around – I just set up a couple of tables and gathered up all the art supplies we were trying to get rid of.  We set the program space up for an hour, but we’re already planning on offering our Crafternoon again for a whole afternoon as a drop-in program.
The kids were welcome to use whatever craft supplies were available to create whatever they wanted!  It was so exciting to see what the kids were interested in, how long they spent working on their projects and how they interacted with the other kids in the room.  We had kids working for the whole hour who could have kept creating, but we ran out of time.  We had a few kids work on a couple of projects while others focused on one project for the whole hour, but what was really exciting for me was that I didn’t once hear, “I’m bored!” or “I don’t know what to do!”
The kids were so excited to have open exploration of the art supplies and really enjoyed themselves!  I think, kids are often rushed from one activity to the next and are note given the time to relax and really spend some time creating.  I can’t wait to offer this program again, hopefully next month and for a whole afternoon instead of just an hour.