10 Inspiring Ways To Get Creativity Flowing In Your Kids

Sometimes you need a little inspiration and help in order to get your kids to create something new.  So today I am talking about finding creative props that can help get the creative juices flowing.  I know that many times if I just hand my children a piece of paper and a box of crayons they will usually start colouring something.  But sometimes I like to stretch them a bit in their creativity, yet still have them create that they really like.  So here are a few ideas to help create new projects.

1. Googly eyes:  Paste googly eyes on a surface of some sort.  It can just be a blank piece of paper, a wood board, or even a canvas.  Tell them then to create a face or a fun creature or animal around the goggly eyes.  My kids loved this and some really cool art was created as well!  We even gave their goggly eyed creatures names, which then turned into a time of story telling because a picture tells a story and they just created characters for a story.  If you do this with a group of kids, they can collaborate and make a story together using all of their characters as a part of the story.

2. Team work:  I begin with some designs or doodles on a canvas and then get my kids to add to it. I allow them to have the freedom to add what they want and use their own unique style.  It's awesome to see different styles coming together.

3. Pictures from a magazine:  Paste pieces of pictures from a magazine onto a blank paper and then have them finish the picture.  This was a fun one for the kids to do and they came up with some great ideas!

4. Finger print doodles:  Make finger prints on paper by pressing their thumbs on a stamp pad and transferring them to your paper.  Doodle around the finger prints turning them into doodle pictures.  This was so much fun and we made all kinds of little doodle creatures!

5. Funky object:  Have them find an object in the room and draw it.  Then have them create a funky creature from it.  I got this idea from a really cool book called The Ice Cream Coot And Other Rare Birds by Arnold Label.

6. Play dough and toys: When all else fails, bring out the play dough!  My son loves using it while playing with his trains, and makes his own tracks for them.

7. What's in the house?:  Using a cardboard box, get the kids to paint and make a house (adding doors and windows) and then have them create objects to go in their house.

8. My colourful pallet:  Hand them a canvas of white paper that has random shapes of watercolour pencil drawn on it.  Have them add water to the shapes with a brush and create a picture incorporating all the paint shapes.

9.  Drawing pictures from Numbers:  This is fun to do.  Start by drawing out a number and then see if you can create it into a picture of something.



10.  Fill in the Frame:  Draw a picture of different frames and then have your children fill in the frame.  We have chalkboard walls in our home, so we use those.  However if you don't have this available to you, you can do it on any large piece of paper as well.

So there you have it.  10 great ideas to help you get the creative juices flowing in your kids!  Hope you are feeling inspired, and have fun creating!

Trish