10 Great Ways to Create A Culture of Creativity With Your Kids

Recently I had the opportunity to speak at a homeschoolers conference and share a bit about coaching an artistic heart in your kids.  As I prepared and gathered information on this subject, I realized it really was about creating a creative culture.  So today I've decided to share a few things I have learned and discovered along the way.

1. Creativity really starts with YOU!  Even if you think you are not creative, I beg to differ.  There is something inside of you that is creative in nature.  It may be buried deep down inside or perhaps it may look differently than you think.   The attitude you carry about yourself and what you can and cannot do speaks volumes to your children.  So I would say use your words wisely and don't put yourself down or your creative abilities.  Rather, be willing to try new things and see what it is you like.

2. Incorporate a creative space in your home.  Find a space that is not tucked away in a dark corner, but somewhere with light and that would be inspiring.  As I am sure you already know, if you have little ones, they want to be where you are.  I personally have had to make a space in my kitchen and empty out a nearby closet for art supplies.

3. Have an art caddy full of your favourite art supplies.  Have these readily available and the kids will use them much more and you just might as well!  On my art caddy I have some things that are a must in our home (liquid watercolours, markers, oil pastels, glue, glitter, acrylic paint, watercolour paper, pencils and stamps).  DIVERSITY is great!



4. Invest in a sketchbook for you and your children.  Honestly, being able to just doodle for 10 minutes a day has made such a big impact in my creativity.  I also find that my children love to get their sketch books out and do the same.  Sometimes they will draw pictures from something they have just watched on TV or something that they see.  It's a great way to encourage creativity throughout the day.

5. Speak to your kids about their artwork.  Don't just assume you know what they are drawing or painting.  Instead ask them to tell you about their painting.  I also suggest that you be specific in saying what it is you like about their artwork.  If it's the colours, or the lines they used, the uniqueness that they show in their drawing, then make sure to tell them.

6. Encourage their style.  I could do a whole other post on this topic alone.  For now I will just say to help them develop their style by seeing what it is they like about their art, looking at other artists work they like,  and daily doodling without any preconceived ideas about what they should draw. Encouraging their uniqueness.  Look for their personality traits in their creativity.

7. Take time as a family to create together.  The kids love this and you may find yourself smiling too! Do family drawings and paintings together where everyone adds their own flavour.  Pick a project that you could all do and even add storytelling or music into the mix.

8. Put out drawing prompts for your kids to get inspired (I did a post on this in the past).  Some ideas you could try are to glue googley eyes to paper and have them finish the picture,  place their toys out for them to sketch, start a picture and have them finish it,  or have an inspirational wall with inspiring pictures for them to incorporate in their drawings or paintings.



9. Create with the season you are in!  I love that we are approaching spring and summer because there are so many creative things you can do outside.  From creating a really colourful doodle garden, to gathering and painting sticks, painting stepping stones that tell a story, to making an imaginary land with cardboard boxes under a big tree. (hmmm this is topic to blog on more!)

10. Display your kids artwork!  Somewhere as we get older, we can lose that excitement of wanting everyone to see what we've just created.  As a kid, you can't hang up your artwork fast enough.  As we get older that changes and we don't want anyone to see what we just did.  I think that's really sad. It's all part of a journey and what you and your child create is an expression of you on that day and time.  So I say display!  Have things such as a wire to hang artwork on, frames, cork boards, a clipboard wall filled with artwork, or make some of the artwork into a journal for keepsakes to look back on.  I only wish I had a journal like that, that I could look back on and see what I had done as a little girl.  Celebrate the creativity!

So there are just a few things that you can do to create a culture of creativity. ! I hope you enjoy and happy creating!!!

Trish

What It Takes To Keep On Rhyming (A Post By Steve)

For those of you who have been following us for a while on our Facebook page , you'll know that I (Steve) have been trying to do a rhyme to end each day with.  As a musician and music teacher, I tend to always be thinking of and looking for different words and rhymes to use for lyrics.  So I figured that doing rhymes each day wouldn't be too difficult for me.  But the reality is,  after the first few weeks I started to find myself struggling to keep at it.  I found it difficult to get inspired.  I found that always doing the 'funtastical' rhymes didn't always fit with the mood I was in.  And so, I finally decided to just start doing poems of whatever would come to mind.  Some are thoughtful, some are fun, some are just plain dumb (ha, I made a rhyme and didn't even know it)!   But that's ok.  I'm sure the reality is that for every 100 rhymes I come up with, I may get one that really is good.  But the other thing for me is that if there is one that encourages you, or brings a smile to your face, then that rhyme is a success.

Too often I can tend to focus on the numbers.  I love stats and tend to follow our Facebook stats quite a bit.  It's easy to get caught up in the numbers and how many likes, comments, or shares I get on any one particular rhyme or post.  But why is that?  Why do the numbers represent success?   Which then makes me ask, what really is success?  Is success seeing lots of people saying how much they love what I'm doing?  Is success seeing money come in from our creative endeavours?  Or is success deeper than that?  Perhaps success is really just being able to do something we love, and bringing a smile to someone's face as we do it.  Perhaps success is the little things, not the big numbers.  For me, it encourages me to know that something I have written might have brightened someone's day.  Even if it's just for one, then that encourages me to keep on going, to keep on rhyming.  That's what keeps me going when I don't feel like sitting down and writing.  I love hearing your stories and comments of how you look forward to the bedtime rhymes each night.  I love knowing that in some way I have brought light to your day.

So I will continue to rhyme.  Some will be good, some will be not so good.  But each will be a success in their own way.  Even if the success is just the fact that I took the time to do the rhyme!  :)

Steve

Inspiring You And Your Kids Through the Creative Power of the Sketchbook!

I love to take time each day to draw in my sketchbook.  Except my sketches are more like whimsical doodles.  I have found that taking 15 minutes a day to doodle has really changed my creativity and helped me come into my own style.  So I wanted to pass this simple exercise onto my kids since they already love to draw.   With the numerous papers of their drawings all over the house,  I had to do something to keep track of them all.   A sketchbook seemed like a logical idea since it keeps all of their wonderful creations in one place.  So recently we purchased bound sketchbooks for the kids and I am encouraging them to use their new books.  

How do you inspire sketches/doodles for you and your kids to add to your sketchbooks?  Here are a few thoughts.

1.  Doodle:  I normally doodle without any kind of expectation of what to draw.  I just make lines and shapes and don't really pay much attention to what I am drawing, I just see what comes out on the page.   I love this because it has taken all the pressure off to try to draw something really great.  When I'm finished I'm often amazed to see what I find in my doodles.  Characters with little stories to tell, and sometimes even reflections of what I currently am going through.  Somedays I add colour with watercolours or markers and it brings even more imagination out!   I find that for kids, when you ask them to doodle they will often begin to draw pictures.  So to get them out of this mode I take them through something called taking your pen for a workout.  I explain that your pen is going to workout today and sometimes it is walking, running, jumping, twirling and so on.  They love it and begin to naturally doodle.  We then fill the lines with colours.  It's important when doing doodling that you don't erase your lines.  Just go with what you draw and don't worry about making any mistakes.  I love to doodle in black tip markers.

2. Sketch from your imagination:  I find this is the most common one my kids do.  At ages 2,4 and 6 they haven't had any formal art lessons on how to draw.   I just let them create and draw what comes to mind.   I will often find my son drawing images from his favourite movie.   My six year old draws lots of pictures of her family.   My two year old loves to draw with tons of colour.   They will naturally have things in their heads that they like to draw.   At this age, I don't worry about trying to correct them or train them on how to draw, but rather let them have fun!   As for me, I too love to draw from my imagination and have found that it is a skill I have had to develop over time.

 

  

3.  Sketch an object:  Again, with having young kids I don't tell them that we are going to draw this object on the table but rather I set up clues of things for them to draw.   I may place a toy or a flower on the table and begin to sketch it myself.  Usually if my six year old sees this, she too begins to do the same.   My four year old may do this too if it is something that peeked his interest such as Toothless from the movie How To Train Your Dragon.

There are some simple things to do when opening your sketchbook!   I want to leave you with a challenge this week!  The family sketchbook challenge.  I recommend that each member of your family that is participating whether one or 5 purchases a brand new sketch book and takes about 15 minutes a day to sketch or doodle.   Let me know how it goes and I would love to take a peek at what comes out in your sketchbooks if you want to post pics! 

                                

One last thing,  I would recommend a sketch book with a coil ring for yourself, and a bound sketchbook for younger kids if you want to keep all their art in one place.  If you are going to use markers or watercolours,  I really love mixed media sketch books since you can use all kinds of media on it.   For my kids, I just got simple hardcover sketchbooks that they couldn't easily rip the pages out of!  

Happy sketching!

Trish

Creative Ideas For A Wonderful Winter Day With Your Kids

I will be the first to admit that I am not a winter person!  I have to drag myself outside and usually my time outdoors in the winter is very short!  So as my kids get a little older I have been making them go outside for some fresh air and have had the joy of watching them through the window.  However, I thought I needed to make myself get outside as I find their time outdoors is short-lived as well.  So I came up with some structured creative activities to enjoy the wonders of winter!

Here are some creative ideas that you can do to make for a wonderful winter day!  After bundling myself and three kids up, we walked out in knee deep snow and I encouraged my kids to see the beauty in winter.  As much as I love the white in the snow, I love even more the way bright colours pop on the snow!  So the first thing we did was to make some snowball soup!  Except the snow wasn't co-operating too well and we couldn't make snowballs.  So I piled the snow into a big hill and we had snow hill soup instead.   Still fun!!!  We poured liquid watercolours all over our snow hill. (you can also use food colouring).

What good is a time outside in the snow without making a snow angel?  I thought we would add a little creative edge to this by taking our liquid watercolour paints to outline our snow angels.   I just had the kids pour the paint straight from the bottle but I would recommend having little spray bottles that you mix your paint and water in and then have them spritz the paint out.

We looked around to see what else we could be creative with and found a few lonely pine cones hanging from our tree.  So we grabbed hold of them and decided to paint them up.  We need a few more to doodle on and we'll make them into a cool centre piece along with some fun papermache winter birds.

       

And lastly, my favourite thing to look at in the winter is the icicles!  I love the way they look.  The beautiful patterns that the icicles make as they wind and twirl is amazing.  The way they seem to be growing all around our house right now is making it look like a humble ice castle?   So I reached up high, picked some of these beautiful sculptures, and then took them inside where I needed to warm up!  I filled a glass fish bowl with snow, arranged my icicles like a flower bouquet and then poured liquid watercolours over them.  They looked really cool!  Kind of like coloured glass.  Too bad they melted so fast and didn't last!   But they would have made a nice centre piece for a winter picnic...except I don't do winter picnics!



So there you have it!  A few chilly creative activities!  Of course after our time of winter creating we came inside and warmed up with popsicles!  Have a wonderfully creative wintery day!

Trish

A Five Star Adventure In Juicing

Today I felt like I had an overload of creative projects.  Normally I love spending lots of time creating, but today I just felt like a needed a wee break from it all.  I kind of felt like someone who had stuffed themselves with so much food that they couldn't eat another bite!  I have been stuffing myself with creative projects, blogs, tutorials, and I feel stuffed.  So instead, I decided to spend some time in the kitchen enjoying something I also love to do... eating!
A box of mangoes arrived at our house last night and it was just the incentive I needed to get my juicer back out!  So I did just that and made the family some yummy mango strawberry juice! All sugar free, and the kids drank it all up!

The juicer! 

The hardest part of juicing is cutting up all the fruit and vegetables, but it's worth it.  Today I am making strawberry mango juice!

Mangos make for a thick juice so you may want to delete it with some sparkling water. 

Although juicing may be a bit of work, I love the benefits that I have felt from it.  After doing it for a number of consecutive days, I even noticed a difference in my skin.  It was much clearer and it boosted my energy as well... especially on the days where I was lacking sleep.  It also kick starts your metabolism and can help in shedding some extra pounds.  But above all else, fresh fruits and vegetables are delicious!  I sound like an info commercial!  YIKES !!

Here is a recipe that I thought was appropriate at this time of the year as it seems many are fighting off colds and the flu .  This is called the Immune System builder from the book, Big book Of Juices And Green Smoothies by Cherie Calbom.

1 handful of parsley or watercress
2-3 Kale leaves
1 cup of blueberries
1 green apple
1/2 cucumber
1 lemon peeled

Cheers to you and good health!  Enjoy!

Trish

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

How To Create A Funtastical Valentines Day Party For Your Kids

This year I promised my kids a Valentines party!  Not every year does this happen, but this year seemed like a good time to have one.  So the planning began, starting with a few invites, and we were on our way.

So today I welcome you to our Funtastical Valentines party!  Sit back and relax as the work has been
all done!   I know how busy and energetic kids can be so I wanted to include a variety of activities for them to do to keep them going.  

Since I love including art in our events, this Valentines party was going to be no exception.  I have  learned that when having a group of kids it is good to be organized!  So I had some preparing to do in order for things to go smoothly.  Things such as having all my art supplies out and set up, water jugs, paint brushes, paper, and of course cupcakes.

The kids arrived with stacks of Valentines to hand out, and if they didn't have any red on them they were sure to get a splash of red face paint on their cheek.  

I decided to use the cupcakes as my canvas.  We painted them by using food colouring mixed with water, and a brand new pack of paint brushes. You really can paint just about anything!  It was just like using water colours, except on icing.  Adding sparkles and hearts was the extra little touch to have some fabulous looking cupcakes that quickly got gobbled up by some hungry little artists (I don't think I have ever eaten my artwork before).

                         

And what would be cupcakes without a nice steeped cup of bubblegum tea?  A perfect match for any Valentines day party.  We added a splash of very berry juice to cool it off.   It was a great hit as the kids drank from their dainty little china teacups.

With blue and purple lips, they were ready for some Valentine art!  I choose a project that was fairly simple for all ages, and fun at the same time.  Glue, salt and watercolours!  Taking my glue bottle, I used the end like a pencil and generously squeezed out glue to form hearts.  I then added some salt and shook it around so that it stuck to the glue.  The last step was to take liquid watercolours and an eyedropper and add them to the salt.  It created a cool looking piece of art! 

Who knew that food colouring could make such faces?

My next plan was a candy hunt outside to help get some of that energy out.  The only problem is that I had to be a little flexible with this as the weather wasn't cooperating too well.  We had very cold temperatures and a chilly windchill.  So I originally was going to bury a bag full of treasure (candy) in the snow out back but decided to bring things inside.  I created different clues for the kids to find and then they had to go as a group and find the buried treasure.  It wasn't too buried in my purple bath tub!  There lay candy for all!!!  Just what every kid needs after some very sweet cupcakes.

It was lots of fun to have the kids over and they all played so well . We moms even got a chance to sit and chat. A Valentines party that I know my kids will remember for a long time as they had fun playing and creating with others!