Placement Activity: Magic Fairy Wands

This craft idea comes from a volunteer in Russia.  She was initially concerned that the idea of making magic wands would not be appealing to the boys in the group - however, she told me that she could not have been more wrong.  They loved it!  It is a good reminder to keep an open mind to cultural differences, and not to make any assumptions.

Activity/Idea Name:
Magic Fairy Wands

Brief description of the placement where you work (please include ages, number of people, languages spoken, other etc):
I worked at a children’s hospital in Russia. The children were between the ages of 4 and 10, and had a variety of mental health issues. There were approximately 25 children doing the craft project at any one time. The children spoke only Russian, but staff members spoke English and a translator was available. Once you show an example, the project is fairly easy to understand for a variety of age ranges.

Goal of the activity:
This is a craft activity to create and personalize a fairy wand, which can be used to play with – this might be great for a group of young girls.

Required resources:

• A pre-prepared star shape cut out of cardboard
• Straws for each star shape
• Pre-cut square tin foil pieces
• Tape to attach the straws to the stars
• Glitter & glue, puffy paint, stickers, or anything that will adhere to tin foil
• Ribbons to attach to the wands

Step-by-step process:
Give each child one star, one straw, and one piece of tin foil. The first step is to wrap the tin foil around the star. Then, ask each child to decorate their stars to personalize it, using a variety of materials in the center of the tables. Once each star is decorated, attach the straws to the back of each star to make it into a wand, and allow the kids to tape or glue ribbons and other materials to hang next to the straw. After the glue or materials dry, they can play with their wands. 

Do you have any suggestions/improvements for the next time?
If you are using cheap tin foil to wrap the stars, it might rip easily, which can frustrate the kids. Be prepared to show them that it doesn’t need to be perfect, and be prepared with extra tin foil pieces for these rips.

When working with glitter, put out a paper plate with a small amount of different colors of glitter on each for kids to apply with their fingers. Don’t give the entire bottle of glitter, as this will create a huge mess. As an alternative, you can go around with a bottle of glitter and pour it over the glue in their chosen color. Do this craft on small pieces of paper to minimize clean-up from spilled glitter.