For parents, September is often a stressful season. With the usual back to school and work week starting back up, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed in the midst of the routine. This can especially be the case when your little ones come home with an insurmountable amount of energy that seems impossible to equal. When this happens, art comes to the rescue!
Art is a great way to get children in a calmer state of mind. By allowing them to put all their attention towards a single project, you are not only allowing them to increase their composure skills, but also letting them grow their creativity. For all these reasons, this blog post looks at some fun, low-maintenance activities to do with your kids that they will be sure to love!
The first fun activity to do with your kids is plasticine! Also known as modeling clay, this medium is a great way for your little one to explore creativity by allowing them to experiment with different shapes, patterns, and colours. An excellent way to get them engaged in this medium is by proposing different prompts for them to complete, such as animals. Take a look at some of the plasticine work some students did during out art classes for some inspiration:
The next fun and easy artistic activity for kids is called “tape shapes”. This is a simple project requiring little materials or help, and which your child can do all on their own.
To begin this activity, take a piece of paper and some low adhesive masking tape. Ensure that your tape is not too sticky, as this may cause the paper to rip later on in the activity. Using this tape, we will place it on the paper in any positioning desired. Here is what your project may look like at this point:
Once this is done, use any type of coloured materials, such as crayons, coloured pencils, or markers, to draw over the entire surface of the paper. Encourage your child to be creative here by using different colour combinations and patterns!
Now that your project is nearly done, carefully remove the masking tape to reveal the areas that it covered. This will leave you with some fun geometrical patterns! Here is the finished project, done with the help of a little artist:
Try letting your child get creative with their way of arranging the tape, and see the different outcomes it produces!
For our final project, we will be doing an activity called “colourful bubbles”. This is something more time consuming, meaning that it will keep your little ones entertained for longer!
To start, we will take a piece of paper, and, using our art supply of choice, draw circles of all different shapes and sizes, making sure that they overlap. Don’t worry if the circles aren’t perfectly circular— it adds charm! But if your child is keen to perfection, try having them use different round objects and tracing them. Here is what the drawing might look like at this stage:
After this is done, colour in the areas that the circles separated. You can encourage your child to use a multitude of different colours, and even add in some patterns! My final project looked like this:
Try this project a few times to see the different things your child comes up with!
If you and you child try any of these activities, make sure to tag our Instagram and Facebook pages with pictures! We would love to see what you come up with!
Art is a great thing to keep kids busy with, and an even better long-term hobby for them to invest in! By helping them develop their creative side, it’s the both of you who are benefiting. So keep their artistic side going strong— you never know where it will take them!
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