I was really excited when I heard that the picnic table talk topic for this week was arts and crafts. As the title of my blog implies, I love crafting with and for my children. I wrote about things I do to encourage creativity in our home here (there are more excellent ideas in the comments for that post). That post inspired this post about crafting in tight and/or rented spaces (there are some great suggestions in the comments for this post also). Crafting can get pretty messy, so I shared my best laundry tips and tricks here.
I get fantastic inspiration from blogs that I read, and I sporadically share my personal favorites through “blog favorites” posts. Here are a couple favorite activities I made up with my kids:
- Using a plastic desk protector and a roll of paper to make various play mats – so far we’ve done a Play-doh play mat, a restaurant play mat, and a house plan play mat.
- Geometric shapes felt board activities.
Emma has recently started inventing her own craft activities, which is very fun and rewarding to see.
I’m always a fan of free-style art, and let’s not forget nature’s art. I try to let my kids play outdoors as much as possible, weather permitting, and I’ve even been known to bring the outdoors in on particularly blistery days.
I love art supplies. Here are the basics that I try to always have on hand:
- Felt
- Markers (I love Crayola washable)
- Crayons
- Construction paper
- Glue sticks
- Plain paper
- Roll paper (we get ours from Ikea, which has the best price I’ve seen)
Other items I like to have around:
- pom poms
- pipe cleaners
- beads (with holes large enough to fit on the pipe cleaners)
- yarn
- fabric scraps
- various kitchen and household recyclables
- Play-doh (store-bought or home made)
- any other art supplies I can get my hands on
I also recently bought some Crayola paint-filled brushes that I love (and blogged about here). I’m pretty loyal towards Crayola products, in no small part because I ingested ridiculous quantities of their art supplies as a child and still turned out okay. Not that I recommend ever ingesting art supplies of any brand in any quantity, but I appreciate the non-toxic and frequently washable nature of Crayola products.
I look forward to reading everyone else’s posts about arts and crafts!
