Chris Peace asked:
If you have decided that creativity is important for your child’s development, now is the time to start doing everything you can to encourage that creativity. One of the best ways is to provide arts and crafts for kids while also giving children an environment that is open to artistic and creative self-expression. Below are some additional exercises you may want to consider implementing in your home to achieve the desired results in your child.
Combining Music & Art
Part of providing the right environment for encouraging creativity is by joining your child in exploring the fun of arts and crafts for kids. One activity is to take a sketchbook and some oil pastels (they produce better results than crayons) and turn up some great music. If you love classical music, that’s a good choice. However, any type of music will work as long as you feel it’s appropriate for your child. Now using these arts and crafts for kids create a picture of using the music as an inspiration. When the song is over, compare your efforts and talk about the types of emotions you both felt from the same song.
You can repeat the activity with different types of music and compare those results, too.
Cloud Inspiration
We all know that some people can see shapes and designs in clouds, right? Well, practice with your child for a few days and get in the habit of talking about the shapes you see in the sky. Then take your trusty arts and crafts for kids outside, including colored pencils or paints and some paper, and each of you should draw something you see in the clouds. Don’t talk about what you’re creating on the paper until you’re both finished.
Magazine Story
If you want to encourage both your child’s artistic skills and writing ability, gather some old magazines and start clipping out pictures together. Then bring in the arts and crafts for kids. Let your child glue some of the cutouts into his or her sketchbook. Then using colored pencils write a story to go along with the images. The story can be written right on the page or can be type of up neatly, printed off, and glued in as well. By combining both of these elements, along with the arts and crafts for kids, you’ll be challenging your child to definitely think outside the proverbial box and come up with something truly unique. Then you can share your stories with one another.
The Story of the Day
If the two of you aren’t together during the day, take about 15 minutes each night before dinner to recreate some of the highlights of your days using arts and crafts for kids. Then you can share them and talk about them over dinner. This can be a great way to work out any stress or negativity either of you are feeling if you’ve had a bad day. It’s very therapeutic no matter what age you are.