Encouraging Kids Creativity (Our Art Drawer)

We do lots of painting and crafting with the boys, but normally it's something that we do together, but since turning 3 Champ has had a huge boost in creativity and constantly wants to make, draw and create things.  Great, but as Bud never creates anything (he's all about imaginary play) this type of play is all a bit new to me.

All our art supplies are stored away upstairs and I have been just bringing them out as required, but this post from Tinkerlab about creating a self service creative zone inspired me to have a selection of art supplies available for Champ all the time.

Two things that prevent this 1) Little Dude is into everything and I don't want him to have access to pens and scissors unsupervised, and 2) we really don't have a lot of space.  Our solution, we've created an art drawer.

So, here it is.  It only contains the basics and I'm not quite ready to put the paints in reach yet (!), but there's enough here to keep Champ busy and I know he can competently use these bits.

And it's worked a dream, his creativity is on a huge upward curve and I think he feels encouraged that I trust him to get out his own equipment to use.  He also has free access to our recycle bin.

This led him to create his own spacesuit and helmet.

And of course, every creative spaceman needs their own spaceship to fly in!  The only downside is we are going through A LOT of tape!

It's not my perfect solution (you can check out my perfect playroom on Pinterest), but making the art drawer freely accessible has definitely encouraged Champs creativity.  Hopefully, this is step one of many steps towards being brave in letting the boys lead their play more.

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