Just because your child is out of child care for the evening, the weekend, or the holidays does not mean their learning and exploring has to stop! Art activities are wonderful edutainment tools for teaching spatial awareness, strengthening memory, honing observational skills – the list goes on! Here are five activities you can do today that encourage sensory exploration, listening skills, observational drawing skills, and more.
This can be done with a transparent plastic storage box lid and some holiday or faerie lights. String the lights under the transparent lid and dim or shut off the lights. From there, the possibilities are endless. Transparent papers will catch the shine as your child draws. Paint can glow across the surface! Stencil and shape and let your child see how many flat, colorful geometric shapes they can fit in the stencil. The setup is fast and the clean-up is even more so.
An oldie, but a goodie. Playdough has literally been around for generations, and with good reason. Playdough encourages children to think and translate their creations in a 3D way, so not only does it push their creativity to another conceptual medium, but it also teaches them spatial awareness and depth. Let’s take it up another notch: create a “small world” play session. Toys, shapes, and structures are perfect for molding, modeling, and encouraging sculpting concepts from your mini-Michelangelo.
Talk about exploring the space! Cover the dining room table with paper, either a big page or taped together parchments, and dump all the crayons, markers, and pencils out. Why not throw in some stickers and watercolors, too? Gather around to create your own mini-mural or start and finish one another’s drawings. This helps with conceptualizing ideas and builds bonds among family members.
There is nothing like a pillow, blanket, or cardboard box fort. The imagination can run wild, because that fort can just as well become a spaceship, submarine, or time machine. Work with your child to build the fort to promote listening skills as you use teamwork from start to finish. Just remember who’s in charge! Celebrate with snacks, storytime, pretend, or even a well-deserved nap.
Develop those sensory skills with a cardboard box. Gather as many items as you can that vary in texture, shape, size, and temperature. Cold noodles, a squeaking toy, washed grapes, a warm stone, building blocks, marbles, or a fuzzy mitten – the possibilities are only limited by your imagination. Try to see what objects they can guess by using tactile senses. This can also be done with a blindfold, which gets olfactory and auditory senses involved! Just remember, your child is going to be putting a whole lot of trust in whatever you pick.There are plenty of fun and easy art activities you can enjoy with your child right at home.Tired of Googling “child care services near me”?Reach out to Wonderschool today to see how you can bring quality child care to your little learner with our in-home child care programs and on-site services.
Find a child care program that meets your needs from thousands of listings using our Child Care Finder. If you're a provider, create a listing to get discovered by families near you!