About a year ago, my supervising teacher leaned over to my desk and said nonchalantly, “For January, you will teach a Crafts class. You know, making stuff?  OK?”

Stunned, I nodded my assent and stared balefully at the pitiful array of art supplies my hagwon kept.  We had some origami paper squares, a dozen or so pairs of scissors, a couple of nearly spent glue sticks, and about 65 crayons. Not 65 packs of Crayolas, 65 individual, heavily used crayons.  I shook my head in dismay. I had very little experience with crafts and even less with teaching children to do them, let alone children who don’t speak very much English.  How was I going to manage all this chaos in my pitiful 8×15 classroom?

I was heartened the next day to find out that I would, in fact, receive a budget to buy supplies for my class.  Over the last year or so, I’ve managed to steadily amass a little stockpile of crafting necessities:  a glue gun, yarn, beads, construction paper, and so forth.  Tracking many of these items down in a foreign country was an ordeal in itself, worthy of its own forthcoming post.

So, anyway, I have survived teaching this class three times now,and I realized that there are probably other foreigners who have been charged with teaching or creating a dreaded 특강 (special lecture) when the kids go on winter and summer vacation.  So, I’m going to post some of the crafts that have worked best for me over the last year or so.  Feel free to comment with any related questions or suggestions.

American friends, many of these might also be great ideas for projects to do with your children or grandchildren.

Before you begin, one caveat. When you’re working with English Language Learners, it is ESSENTIAL for you to prepare a sample craft (or even two or three).  Sometimes I even prepare samples of various stages of a craft’s completion so they can check their progress.  They will learn so much more by studying these than from all the instructions you can give them, especially since their rudimentary vocabulary doesn’t always include crafty words, even simple ones like “fold” or “lengthwise”.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a model is valued at somewhere just north of a million for kids with developing language skills.

Without any further ado, I present Craft #1:  The Paper Dragon

I found this super-easy craft idea on the Crayola web site, which also has hundreds of coloring and craft ideas for students.  This is a good first craft because it’s simple to do and gives you the opportunity to kind of assess your students’ ability (or inability) levels.

Materials Needed:  Dragon Templates, markers or crayons, glue sticks, colored paper, plastic straws or Popsicle sticks

Instructions:

1) Download and print copies of the Dragon Template here for all of your students.

2)  Students use markers or crayons to decorate the dragon.  While they are doing this, cut 8.5″ by 11″ colored paper into thirds lengthwise so that you end up with three strips that are 11 inches long and a little less that 3 inches wide.

3)  When students finish coloring, have them cut out the dragon shapes.

4)  Students then pleat the colored paper strips accordion-style and glue one end to the dragon’s head and tail.  Use tape to fasten two straws to the dragons as handles.

Because of their pleated middles, the dragons “dance” around and are really cute when kids move the straws.  Many of my students also chose to name their dragons and make them carry on English conversations with each other.

Since this is an easy craft, this gives you time to teach the kids how to access, share, and clean up supplies when they are finished.  Establishing those procedures will make life easier when the crafts get more complicated and time-consuming.  This could also be a great craft idea to do around Lunar New Year, since parade dragons are traditional objects in many Asian New Year celebrations.