Winter 2000
When I was a child my mother had a lovely old oak wardrobe that stood in the downstairs hallway and held an assortment of coats, hats and umbrellas. Its dark wood gleamed as it stood so quietly, doors secured by ancient oval-shaped keyholes that gave way to an ornate antique key. When I passed by sometimes I stopped to part the coats inside and rap my hand on the back wall of the wardrobe. I can still recall the slight thrill of anticipation I felt just before my hand touched the wooden back. I never got over hoping to feel snowflakes or a breeze or even a rough tree branch instead of the ordinary wood. I loved that wardrobe and how its presence in our home represented for me a tiny bit of the magical world of C.S. Lewis' Narnia.
When I moved away from home and started a family of my own my parents built a proper closet in the downstairs hallway of their two-hundred-year-old farmhouse and I became the happy recipient of that wonderful magical wardrobe. It has faithfully served my family for years and perhaps suffered additional rappings from three more sets of hopeful hands as their owners grew through dreams of going to Narnia some day.
No longer a coat closet, the wardrobe holds a very different sort of treasure now. Instead of utilitarian articles of clothing, it is filled with deep shelves, top to bottom. These shelves contain the heart and soul of our homeschool. They contain our entire array of craft and art supplies and the old coat closet is now our craft cabinet.
Books, catalogues, sketch pads, papers—both ornamental and ordinary, crayons, rulers, pencils of all sorts, paints, brushes, scissors, paper cutters, pens, inks, rubber stamps and so many other odds and ends fill those shelves. The makings of masterpieces reside in the wardrobe now. It is the repository of my children's imagination.
I have a strict policy regarding the contents of the antique wooden cabinet—use them!!!! 
The children are allowed free access to any of the materials contained in the wardrobe. I expect them to drag out anything and everything in a search for just the right color pencil or that special rubber stamp we made last year before Christmas. I find that the children are inspired to creative expression at odd hours of the day. Many times I have looked up from washing dishes at 10 PM to find little Scarlett, head bowed over her paper, earnestly drawing with the room's lone lamp a liquid pool of light behind her head.
While learning about fine art and mastering art techniques is certainly an objective for our homeschool, it is not my primary motivation for including arts and crafts in my children's daily lives. As a lifelong artist, I know the special satisfaction that comes from creation. I also know that anything learned through doing is retained longer than something learned through reading or hearing.
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