5 CREATIVE THINGS YOU CAN PAINT WITH YOUR KIDS
We can learn so much about our children when we watch them create. I try to have regular creative projects for my boys each week. Sometimes it helps to build off the ideas of others. This blog a starting point for some ideas we’ve enjoyed our family.
I think it’s so important to allow children the opportunity to explore their creativity. I like to do this in our home by providing time and space for them to freestyle paint. Freestyle painting is a fancy name for picking out your favorite paint colors and creating whatever you want. I love how it allows them to build their hand-to-eye coordination, communicate without using words, and feel the confidence of self-starting a project.
We keep some of these creations for ourselves, but they also make great "just because" gifts for sending to friends and family. If we're planning to send a piece of art to someone specific, I'll try to tell them who they're making it for, so they can incorporate colors and other things they know that person likes.
I also try to change the scenery to help them find inspiration and ideas for their creations. We will sometimes work in the office, at the dining room table, on the back porch, and even outside in the grass.
We used:
Children grow up so quickly. When I look back on photos of my boys from earlier this year it never ceases to amaze me how much both of them grow up right before my very eyes. Having physical markers of our children’s growth are like little time capsules of their childhood. One way I make these physical markers is by creating hand art with my boys.
There are a variety of ways you can create hand art. You can do more structured things like turning their handprints into:
Fall leaves
Bunnies
Chickens
Turkeys
Or you can do something more freestyle like:
Outlines of their hands (allow the child to color or paint inside of them)
Hand stamping (mixing paint colors and pressing them onto paper)
My boys love picking out their favorite shirts to wear. They also love drawing and painting things. So, I decided to give them the opportunity to create shirts of their own with fabric paint and paint markers.
I remember making shirts as a kid with puff paint and they always turned out really scratchy and were kind of uncomfortable to wear. I wanted to make sure whatever supplies we used were soft and washable.
Younger children will need some direction and help, but my 4 year old had a vision of what he wanted to make and once I gave him the supplies, he took off on his own. Either way, being near, observing, and providing help is a sweet bonding time together.
I love handmade gifts. They’re extra special because you think of the person the whole time you’re making it. I try to put together handmade gifts from the boys throughout the year and at holidays.
This last Christmas, we made these hand-painted canvas bags. We used fabric paint and sponge shapes to decorate each bag individually. This project is nice because it moves pretty quickly and it’s hard to mess up - the messier the better.
Sometimes you need a little spark of inspiration for creativity to set in. To do this, we will paint rocks. My boys have a fascination with collecting rocks (we’ve been picking them up from around the US as we have traveled - so we have a pretty deep stock of stones and rocks. In some cases, we will go out for a walk and look for some good rocks to paint.
Sometimes, when we decorate the rocks we will talk about what they look like and how we can paint them to look like specific animals or characters.
When we’re done, we keep some, give away some, and leave some in our neighborhood when we go on walks for other people to find.
| Credits: Author - Jacintha Payne; Photography - Jacintha Payne |
We all want to have meaningful, quality, and effective interactions with our children. The reality is, we often don't have intentional time that we want with our children...