Art Every Day

I was inspired today by two things.  First a blog entry that someone posted on facebook made me fall in love with the process of children doing artwork every day- the way it makes them think and inspires them and gives them confidence and creativity.  We don't have tons of fancy art supplies at our house- we rely heavily on crayons, stickers, and washable paint.  But this post made me excited about expanding our repertoire to pastels, collage, and more. The second thing was that on my way to pick up the kiddos I was listening to a story on NPR about creativity and how our brains are able to develop and practice creativity and how we learn and problem-solve best when we participate in a wide range of activities on a regular basis.

So when we entered the phase of the evening when I attempt to cook dinner while Zoe screams and Jonathan whines, I decided to break out the crayons and some stickers.  And within moments our kitchen floor looked like this.

Not ideal for cooking, but dodging errant crayons is way better than dealing with whining.  And by dinner time he was actually so into his art that I had to pry him away from his masterpiece- success!

So tonight after bedtime, I was still feeling inspired that in order to foster creativity in my own brain, I should also engage in art on a more regular basis.  I was too tired to go upstairs to drag out my 'real' paints, so I opened up the box of crayons and spent a few minutes filling up a page.

I don't know if I was inspired to a star pattern because I am currently teaching our astrophysics unit at work, or because I am just feeling a bit more spiny and sharp lately, or because we've been reading and talking about dinosaurs and their spikes and horns quite a bit around here lately.  But it was a great way to relax and though I don't think I'll pin mine to the refrigerator, I might break out crayons a little more often just for me!