Pioneer Day, celebrated on July 24, originated as the celebration of Mormon pioneers. Officially recognized in Utah and by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout the world, Pioneer Day is a time set forth to appreciate and honor pioneers. As such, everyone can get in on the colonial spirit and have fun celebrating the pioneers of past and present.
Here are a few festive craft ideas to get your family in the holiday mood. Ideas can be tailored to meet all sorts of ages, skill-levels, and areas of interest.
Pioneer Day Kids’ Craft: Aluminum Pictures
I still remember being in Elementary School and making framed aluminum pictures in celebration of colonial days. It’s a simple craft you can likely do from supplies you already have around the house. Take a piece of cardboard and cut it down to about the size of a normal print, 4 by 6 inches. Wrap aluminum foil around one side of the cardboard, reaching the aluminum foil slightly around to the other side of the cardboard, fastening each of the four ends with scotch tape. Depending on your children, the kids may be able to do that part with or without your help.
You can print out pioneer pictures for the kids, or let them draw something themselves onto a regular piece of paper, sized to match the aluminum foil covered piece of cardboard. After they’ve finished their pictures, have the children each set their drawings onto a foiled cardboard piece. The children are now going to puncture their pictures with a pencil, going through their illustrations and delving into the foiled cardboard behind. Poke holes every centimeter or so making, in essence, unconnected dot-to-dot’s out of the illustrations. Once the puncture marks are completed, you can remove the white pieces of paper and see the neat designs left behind on the foiled cardboard pieces. You can use permanent markers to color in the pictures on the foils. You can frame the pictures with hot-glued fabric, or taped construction paper, or even just decorations made with markers.
To make this craft personalized for pioneers, you can suggest drawing pictures of things like handcarts, flowers, scriptures, seeds, and wildlife. If you want this to be a teaching moment as well as a craft, you can talk about the differences between your family’s circumstances and that of the pioneers. How did the pioneers get food and what did they eat? What did they wear? How hard of times did they have to endure?
Pioneer Day Kids’ Craft: Shoe Box Wagons
If you have some shoe boxes collecting dust around the house, you could easily put them to use by making some fun pioneer handcarts or wagons. Although handcarts might be more representative of some, wagons certainly can put the family in a pioneer mood as well. Using a shoe box as the wagon base, you can cut wheels out from construction paper or other materials you have around the house and attach them to the side of the shoe box. You can make a wagon covering from a curved piece of construction paper taped to both sides of the shoe box. With markers you can decorate and accessorize.
While crafting your shoe box wagons, you can discuss as a family what pioneers filled their wagons and handcarts with. What kind of supplies did they have? How far did they travel in one day? What were their handcarts and wagons made out of? Would we get tired if we had to endure such exertion?
Pioneer Day Kids’ Craft: Paper Dolls
Making paper dolls can be fun and easy. Something like cardstock would be a great base to start with. Have your child draw a picture of a girl or boy onto one piece of cardstock. Picking up the illustrated picture and a blank piece of cardstock behind it, loosely cut out the shape of the doll, making sure to cut through both pieces of cardstock. Hole punch every few centimeters of the picture of the doll with the blank cardstock piece still behind the illustration. Have your child thread yarn through the holes of the paper doll. Before finishing threading you can fill the paper doll with newspaper or stuffing and then tie the yarn tight.
This would be a great opportunity to relate what pioneer children, in particular, had to battle. What were their struggles? What were they required to contribute to their families? Did they have to work really hard in supporting their parents and siblings? What kinds of games did they play and songs did they sing?
