Inspire Your Budding Artist With Kids’ Art Supplies and Activities
Inspire Your Budding Artist With Kids’ Art Supplies and Activities
Kids are natural artists. They love to color, draw and create. From the moment your child is first able to grasp a crayon you’ll have be vigilant to ensure your entire house does not become your child’s canvas. Early attempts at art can be messy, however, the creativity and skills generated by early artistic efforts are an important part of a child’s development. You can help your child to channel their creative passion away from your walls and into real art experiences with high quality kids’ art supplies and age-appropriate activities.
Benefits of Early Art
Working with crayons and paints can help children to master their colors. They also learn about lines and shapes. While their first attempts will be highly abstract, later on they will begin to draw people, cars, houses and trees. This skill is so important many pediatricians use a simple drawing test to assess a child’s development.
Kids’ art activities can also help them to exercise their imaginations, and children as young as two years old can enjoy bringing their imaginary worlds to life with crayons, paint or clay. They will practice their storytelling skills as they explain, often in elaborate detail, the adventures their creations have had. This storytelling is an important precursor to reading comprehension.
Kids’ art and craft projects also build the manual dexterity they will need later on for writing and typing, playing an instrument and working with tools. Squishing clay strengthens the hand muscles, while using a crayon provides practice manipulating a writing tool.
In addition to the many cognitive and developmental benefits generated by early artistic pursuits, being creative is beneficial in and of itself. The process of creation is engaging and rewarding. By providing your children with the right tools and initiating fun kids’ art activities you can ignite a love of art from an early age.
Kids’ Art Supplies
There are many great kids’ art supplies on the market. Look for products designed specifically for children, who enjoy bright colors and whimsical characters. Kids may also need tools of a different size and material than can be found in adult art supplies.
An art easel is a wonderful way to make a child feel like a real artist. Many easels are dual sided, with a roll of paper for painting on one side and a chalk or marker board on the other for drawing.
Coloring books are another popular product. Children love to add color to their favorite characters. Young children tend to simply scribble across the page and are completely pleased with the outcome. Older children will work to color carefully within the lines, exercising their dexterity as well as their patience and persistence. Coloring books are even gaining popularity with adults as a means of relaxation.
Find kid-friendly crayons, markers, and colored pencils. While it may seem that smaller hands would require smaller crayons, toddlers actually do better with large, chunky drawing tools. Round crayons fit comfortably in the hand, but triangular ones will not roll off of the table, and the flat sides can be used to begin training the hand to hold a writing tool correctly. Look for “washable” on the box to protect your walls and furniture.
A portable kit allows your child to create art anywhere they go. Most include paper or a small coloring or activity book and crayons, markers or colored pencils. These can be especially handy for road trips, restaurants and visits to grandma’s house.
Children love the feel and versatility of sculpting clay. The possibilities of this medium are endless. You can make home-made dough that is edible or that can be baked and hardened, or purchase clay in bright colors or interesting textures.
Kids’ Art Activities
Once you have the right tools, you can initiate an endless number of kids’ art and craft activities. Show your child that the same materials can be used in a variety of ways. Think about how you can use activities to help your child learn about themselves and the world around them.
Self-portraits are fun to do and can create a lasting memory. Use crayons and the large paper from a child’s art easel to trace your child’s body, then hang the outline on the wall and allow your child to draw and color their face, hair, and clothing. Do this activity each year around their birthday and you’ll have a fun way to document their growing height and artistic prowess.
Many fun kids’ art activities draw inspiration from famous paintings and painters. Kids can color in black and white versions of famous paintings or practice working in the same medium and style as famous artists. This is a great way to teach principles of composition as well.
Have your child make up a story and create the illustrations for it. You can purchase blank books or composition notebooks with frames for pictures and lines for text. You can also download and print comic book templates, which older kids love.
There are a lot of great ways to combine a child’s love of art and nature. Take a sketchbook and an empty bag on a hike. Spend a day drawing animals, flowers, mushrooms and ponds. As you explore, gather materials such as rocks, leaves, twigs and acorns. Children love painting rock animals and using leaves as stamps. They can also use natural materials to make tiny houses, furniture and table settings for fairy and gnome villages.
Masks and puppets can be endlessly fun to make and use. Cut eyeholes in a paper plates and tie string around the sides, then let your children paint the plates to create fun masks for a play. Paper bags make great hand puppets. Kids can draw or paint directly on the bags or glue on colored paper for horns, eyes, ears, tongues and teeth.
Kids’ art projects can be a great way to foster learning, creativity and a lifelong love of art. They can also be a fun way to enjoy spending time with your child and can give you interesting insight into their thinking and imagination. Nurture your child’s early interest in art by providing them with plenty of kids’ art supplies and materials and by introducing fun activities that will expand their imagination.
