Thursday, May 29, 2008

Bringing Out the Creative Side

I realized that since my new computer arrived a week ago, I haven't blogged one bit. Not to say nothing has been happening, on the contrary, we've been very busy.

At the beginning of May, I got my hands on a great little book by Amanda Blake Soule called The Creative Family. It's filled with tons of fun ideas for family creative time and nurturing your child's creativity. Go visit Amanda at her blog SouleMama; it's always fun and inspiring!

Anyway, I gleaned a couple of things from her book that I immediately put into action.
One of them is to have a creative place for Harrison's art work and little things that we get while on walks and adventures. (Pictures on the refrigerator kept getting knocked off as we passed by) So in the dining room, where we spend a lot of time I made an area for Harrison's projects. Now I have a place for all those sticks and rocks that he doesn't want to let go of; we can look at them and talk about where we found them and what we did that day.

I cleared off the buffet, hung some twine above it and used wooden clothes pins to hang pictures he made from school, church and home.

The bean plant is from school, it's getting larger and larger, any suggestions with what to do with it before I kill it?

Also, I finally got some more photo paper from Costco and printed out some photos of some of Harrison's favorite places, things and people. We hung some of the pictures so that he could see them. Later this weekend we'll change some of them and hand the pictures of our caterpillars!


We also put together a small photo album that he has looked at over and over again, and taken with him to show when we visit friends. I love the idea that he has control over this set of pictures and can rearrange them as he pleases. He is also very proud of his album. I need to print out some of the pictures he took to add them [but I have to get more ink first].

Speaking of pictures, I want to say a BIG thank you to Melody at Slurping Life! I won a Snapfish certificate for 50 free prints! How fun is that!? and the thing is, earlier in the day that I entered the drawing, I was at Snapfish checking for deals because I needed to make some prints - perfect timing!

Check out Harrison's caterpillar experience - coming up next!

5 comments:

Blueberry said...

what a cute way to display his work! bean's art is currently taped to the dinning room and kitchen walls and stuck to the refrigerator. what you did is a fair bit more attractive!! :)

Unknown said...

Those are great ideas! Now I am gonna have to go over there and check things out. Yeah for winning the prints - that WAS perfect timing!!

Anonymous said...

Very creative, you guys! We've always has an indoor "clothesline" for clipping up artwork to dry and display. Love it.

You are making me look lazy with all you've creatively done.

And you're welcome. :)

Christina said...

What great ideas! I will have to set up a creative corner here for N, too. Congrats on the win!

Unknown said...

You are putting my Crafty Tuesdays to shame, girl! We have an area in the playroom with the "clothesline" too...but it just needs to be weeded out so badly. I'm avoiding the area, it is trauma to put some of the stuff away, you know!