Research reveals the absence of a practical guide to crafts specially designed for homebound children which can serve as an aid to parents and teachers. After detailed study of the common illnesses or disabilities and resulting physical limitations, interests, and leisure time activities of more than four hundred physically handicapped homebound pupils in New York City, this guide was developed with the direct objective of relating the craft activities to the interests of these children. Within the range of each stated involvement, the child, his parent, or his teacher, now should be in a position to select the projects which interest him. There is nothing to prevent his selecting projects indicated for other types of involvement, or from among the supplementary projects, if interest or curiosity is aroused, and if the pupil will enjoy doing them, or will be challenged to complete them. It is hoped that craft activities selected in relation to the pupil's handicap will provide purposeful and attractive experiences for him because he can achieve a measure of success in completing them.

The population used in the aforementioned study was selected from a group of approximately 1,900 pupils on register with the Bureau for the Education of the Physically Handicapped, Board of Education, City of New York. Students of elementary school, junior high school, and senior high school grades were represented ranging in age from six to twenty-one for both sexes.

The guide is limited to teaching those crafts that do not require an equipped shop for completion of articles. It includes drawings and photographs which clarify the operations and procedures. It is also designed for use by those with a limited craft background or experience.

To a large extent the social life of homebound pupils is confined to their particular homes. Their interests are circumscribed accordingly. Their relatively fewer available experiences within their homes undoubtedly affect and delimit their outlets. Their leisure time activities are similarly restricted because of physical limitations, lack of transportation, some because of low family income, and some because there is no one available strong enough to lift or carry them to a waiting automobile or bus.

Handcrafts, as an educational experience, can make the home-bound child's many long idle hours more vital, exciting, and interesting. With hobbies of his choice he can learn muscular coordination and some finger dexterity. Often he can do a job at home which will be acceptable to an employer later. At the same time it may provide the child with ultimate tangible means of developing normal self-esteem and a measure of self-support.

Many parents skim through parents' and children's magazines, books, and newspapers to find ideas and projects which their handicapped children may feel inclined or capable of doing. This guide purposes to fill this need. Average parents are not trained to teach handcrafts to handicapped children. However, if parents evince an interest and have some aptitudes for handcrafts, the guide should assist them because its design features clarity, compactness, and conciseness. The designed activities included in this book should provide esthetic experiences that may have therapeutic merit and significant rewarding value in building the ego through the joy of accomplishment.

The illnesses which hamper and which interfere, to a marked degree, with the students' abilities to perform the various tasks associated with the different handcrafts are, primarily, those which affect the hands, the eyes, and, in particular, the coordination between the hands and the eyes. The handicaps of these children result from such illnesses as crippling poliomyelitis, cerebral palsy of the types of spastic paralysis, rigidity, athetosis, tremors, and ataxia, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, Oppenheim's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and others. The effects of these illnesses are referred to because, in general, children affected by them give the handcrafts teacher his greatest concern.

The degree of involvement is a variable which does not lend itself readily to measurement. The extent and nature of the ability to perform may be ascertained, at present, by trial and error, and through the judgment of a competent handcrafts instructor or artisan. This book includes a number of projects for pupils who have residual severe impairments. There are, of course, articles to be made by those pupils whose impairments are lesser in degree. For the latter the choice is resultantly greater. Since none of the projects included in this book requires that the pupils stand or that they use a heavy hammer or mallet, there is a generous variety from which to select for students who are bedridden or who may be confined to wheel chairs.

This book is arranged to make articles according to involvements, namely: (1) one hand involvement, (2) two hands involvement, (3) absence of, or limited strength for grasping, (4) limited hand and eye coordination, (5) "good hands" in wheel chairs or beds, and (6) additional or supplementary projects.

There is an appendix with the names of supply houses where materials may be purchased currently, and where catalogues are available at present. Since these children are unable to go out, shop around, and compare prices of materials and tools, they should be encouraged to do these things themselves by telephone and through the use of catalogues and mail order procedures.

Throughout the book suggestions are made for the use of a substitute tool or an adjustment where needed. Nothing is taken for granted. Plans and specifications are flexible. If the pupil has artistic ability, ingenuity, and originality, it is suggested that he develop and execute his own designs. For those who do not possess this ability, the book includes proposed sources of pictures or drawings which can be traced, enlarged, or photographed, and then used. If the pupil is creative and makes modifications in planning and designing his project, the book urges that he do so but that he use the instructions in order to facilitate the execution.

The individual projects take into consideration pupils' involvements and their ability to carry them out despite their physical limitations. In the original study, the handicapped students' expressions of interests, wishes, and leisure time activities were ascertained. The projects then were planned and related, in a broad sense, to these interests and activities. The different crafts are flexible enough to challenge pupils' resourcefulness, originality in design, and creative expression. In selecting them the gift or sales value aspect was considered. When a handicapped child is able to give or sell some of his creations, it generally bolsters his ego and raises his standing in the family. Finally, the materials used in the projects are relatively inexpensive and generally available locally.