It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to keep your children busy and develop their motor skills, or you’re looking for a new way to channel your creativity and improve your drawing skills, new art ideas are always great. With a few tricks up your sleeve, you can easily entertain your children, help them embrace and develop their creativity, and create unique and wonderful art along the way. We give you a few simple ideas you can use to further improve your own and your children’s love for art.
Color by numbers
Kids love being creative, they enjoy painting and coloring, and coloring by numbers is a great way to combine learning and having fun. With toddlers and small children, simple drawings are the best choice, but even adults can have fun with these, and there are more complex images made particularly for ambitious adults. The best thing is that these coloring pages can easily be found online and downloaded and printed for free, so you always have a ‘stash’ of new pages for your curious and creative children.
Connect the dots
Watching the image come to life after you’ve connected the dots the right way is mesmerizing, and children love it as it allows them to play detectives and archaeologists and discover hidden things among numbers. Not only is it a great way to teach children about numbers, but it’s an excellent practice of different motor skills: holding the pen or the pencil the right way and drawing straight lines. Start with easy tasks and work your way to more difficult and complex pictures together with your children. After they finish connecting the dots, they can always color the image with crayons.
Colouring books
Colouring books are so popular, that today people are making fortunes designing coloring books for adults too. Colouring books are calming and have a therapeutic effect, and the best thing is that you and your children can work together on a single picture and come up with your own little work of art. They are fantastic because you can use different techniques: markers, crayons, colored pencils and pens, and so on. Unlike coloring by numbers and connecting the dots, the only limitations here are the lines in the picture, and your children (as well as you) can get creative with colors and shading.
Mandalas
Drawing repeating patterns is a wonderful (not to mention easy) way to improve your drawing skills, especially your line work, and the best thing is that it’s also great for improving your children’s motor skills and preparing them for writing in school. Drawing mandalas is a great way to channel your creativity and practice your patience. Work together with your children using gel pens, pencils, markers, have them come up with different shapes and doodles which you can later use to create your own family mandala. As time passes, you can switch roles and give your children a ‘set’ of shapes they should use to draw their own mandala.
Black paper art
For those who love all things unconventional and strange, creating art with black paper and opaque colors is the right choice. You can easily create both calligraphy and art on black paper using the right tools: soapstone pencils, white pens, as well as leafing pens which are just markers filled with paint, which makes it easier to use than classic brushes. Leafing pens are also great for creating metallic borders on letters and envelopes, and you can use them for your other DIY projects.
The most important thing to remember and teach your children is that art is a form of self-expression and that mistakes are acceptable, especially when you’re trying to learn a new skill. Teach them not to be too hard on themselves but rather to enjoy what they’re doing, and excellence will soon follow.
Article contributed by Emma Lawson:
Emma Lawson is a busy mom to two wonderful boys and a former English teacher. She is passionate about writing and her boys are her inspiration. She loves to explore, learn and share parenting techniques. You can follow her on Twitter @EmmahLawson