Creativity

It is time to get creative! Below there are a range of activities involving process art, product art, music and imaginary and creative play. Process art is child – led and focuses on the process and creation, rather than the outcome. It promotes discovery, creativity, experimentation and independence. Product art is adult driven with a specific outcome in mind. It helps children to learn new techniques or how to use specific tools.

During imaginative and creative play children learn about the world. They manipulate materials, express themselves, act, interact and try different roles. Playing with vehicles, dolls, boxes, dressing up clothes or blocks all help to enhance a child’s imagination. Reading is a time when your child can explore an imaginary world where characters come to life and adventures happen.

Maya Angelou quotes,”You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

Activities

Process Art: Ball Painting

This art activity is great for creativity, colour mixing, sensory and fine motor skills.

  1. You will need: balls with paint, a creation of a slope using resources from your home eg: cardboard box or a baby changing mat, long paper, a bucket of water to rinse hands and a box to catch the balls.
  2. Move the balls around in the paint which is good for their fine motor skills till the whole ball is covered in paint.
  3. Drop the ball from the top of the slope to the bottom and watch the tracks the balls make.
  4. Keep going using whichever colours your child would like.
Music: Musical Glasses

It’s time to make music! During this activity you can use the language of high/low, fast/slow, loud/quiet and full/empty.

  1. You will need: tall drinking glasses, food colouring, water, a container to pour water and spoons for mixing.
  2. Explain that you are going to place different amounts of music in the glasses and then tap them to make music.
  3. We started filling the glass up with water, chose a food colour and mixed it. What sort of sound did it make? Low or high?
  4. We then repeated the same process with the pother glasses filling them all up with less water.
  5. What happens to the sound of the music? If the glass has less water in, is the sound high or low?
  6. Can your child play the music loudly and then quietly and then fast and then slow?
  7. Play with the glasses and make music!
Product Art and Small World: Creating a Sea Scene
  1. You will need: A drawn fish template, glue, collage paper, resources to make a sea scene: See photo below.
  2. First of all make the fish. Use the collage pieces to create a rainbow fish.
  3. Go round the house a collect everything you will need: A blue piece of material, fish bath toys and stones and leaves from the garden.
  4. Together decide where you want to place everything.
  5. Play with the sea you have created!
Food Art: Rainbow Food

This activity involves eating, which is always popular, colour recognition, shape and fine motor control. We also had the song “I can sing a rainbow” on repeat!

  1. You will need: a variety of different coloured food in bowls.
  2. Start by discussing the shape of a rainbow. Which colour would your child like to use first?
  3. While creating the rainbow discuss how the rainbow starts off small and then gets bigger and bigger.
  4. Once finished, eat it. The cheese was the most popular in our household!
Imaginative Play: The Magic Blanket

You are off on an adventure that will encourage creative thinking and create new ideas.

  1. You will need: A blanket, cushions and a snack.
  2. You are off on an adventure on a flying blanket! You better take a snack so that you don’t get hungry!
  3. Discuss where you would like to go. We are off to spinning land! Count down from 5 and off you go. Land in spinning land, get out and walk round the room spinning.
  4. Get back on the blanket. Where are you going to next? ‘Lion Land’. Count down from 5 and off you go. Land and then walk round the room roaring like a lion or chasing your child!
  5. Get back on the blanket and repeat, encouraging your child to use their imagination and come up with ideas. ‘Jumping Land’, ‘Ice-cream Land’, ‘Dinosaur Land’, ‘Backwards Land’. It doesn’t matter where, just a chance for your child to use their imagination.
  6. Now it’s snack time while sitting on the magic blanket.
  7. Bring some of your child’s toys onto the blanket and they can repeat it with them!
Process Art: Toilet Roll Painting

This is a chance to use those toilet rolls which are then used for a maths activity. Your child can use one colour or mix the colours if they would prefer. Click here for the maths activity.

  1. You will need: 10 toilet rolls and paint on pieces of card.
  2. Pick up a toilet roll, place it in the paint and roll it till it is completely covered.
  3. Let your child explore the colours and the process giving them the opportunity to use the paint however they wish!
  4. Repeat with the other toilet rolls and let them dry.
Creative Play: Box Blocks

Give your child some boxes and see what they do with them.

  1. You will need: Lots of boxes.
  2. Discuss with your child what they could make. A car, a robot, or a house.
  3. My daughter wanted to build them into a tall tower and then be the ‘Big Bad Wolf’ from The Three Little Pigs. She knocked them down as she blew the house down.
Process Art: Coloured Salt Picture
  1. You will need: Salt, food colouring, glue and card.
  2. Add food colouring to the salt the night before and let it dry out overnight.
  3. Glue your card and sprinkle the salt on top.
  4. Shake the salt off, add more glue and sprinkle again!

Do not throw the remaining salt away as you can use it for the next activity.

Imaginative Play: Sand and Water

We then used the salt for small world play – we got out the digger, tractor, people and dogs and played!

  1. You will need: A baking tray, people and diggers.
  2. We then washed everything we had used in a separate baking tray.
Colour Hunt

This is a fun activity and if your child does not recognise certain colours then this is an activity that will help!

  1. You will need: Choose a colour and then hunt for anything in that colour!
  2. We are going on a green hunt. What green things can you find? Go and look and put them in a pile.
  3. Discuss the different shades of green. Not all green is the same which is confusing for children. Some shades are darker and some are lighter. Which shade of green do they prefer?
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