It’s Children’s Art Week and all over the country children are getting involved in artistic activities, and that doesn’t just mean painting!
Children’s Art Week is run by Engage. Engage are an organisation which specialises in getting children involved in activities surrounding visual arts. This can include anything from performance art through to sketching and painting.
To get you and your children involved in the arts this Children’s Art Week, we’ve devised a list of five fun activities which you can participate in using our playground equipment.
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Creative drawing!
Most children love to get creative with their drawings and love to explore alternative mediums. Therefore at Hand Made Places we have the perfect activity for you and your class to try during Children’s Art Week.
At Hand Made Places, we have a selection of outdoor blackboards and whiteboards. These allow children to demonstrate their creative skills using different tools and on a larger scale.
Furthermore, drawing with chalk on a blackboard allows children to explore ways to create images using a negative colour scheme. Children can create night time scenes with ease or even just do an inverted colour design. The possibilities are endless!
Both types of board are easy to clean too, meaning that mistakes are easily fixed! In order to preserve your drawings, you can also demonstrate photography skills by taking a picture, printing it and displaying it for the rest of the school to see!
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Put on a performance!
Art week isn’t just about pictures and drawing! It’s about all arts, and that includes performance art.
Putting on a show is always great fun for younger children, especially when they get to create their own story! You can allow children to express their creative selves by allowing them to be the producers, actors and the directors! You can make the show even more special by putting on this performance on one of our wooden playground stages. Having this stage available means that the performance can be made to look even more professional!
And again why not practice your videographer skills by filming the performances. You can create a small movie of all of the class productions. Then why not hold a ‘movie day’ where children watch their very own homemade film!
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Scavenge for your materials!
Children love to cut and stick, and often it’s just as fun finding the materials to create your picture!
This Children’s Art Week you can encourage children to get outside and scavenge for materials to create their picture. Having an outdoor classroom allows children to become more familiar with the outdoors.
On top of all of that by employing the use of a specific sheltered classroom area allows children to get messy without the big clean up indoors. Children can look for leaves and flowers and create a collage using materials which they have found. This is a great way to get arty without having to draw or paint. Skills which some children may find more difficult than others.
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Create prints or patterns in sand!
This Children’s Art Week we’d like to encourage you to explore different mediums – take your artistic talents outside of the classroom! Though some people may find certain activities obscure, creating patterns and prints in the sand is another great way to get children involved in arts! Children can use different objects to create patterns or images as well as exploring different textures.
Play equipment like trucks and cars can be used to leave tyre prints, where hands and feet can be used to create different drawings. You can even create small sculptures by adding a little water to your sand, much like the castles you make at the beach.
By using a range of different objects you can be more creative with your models. For example you could use straws to create sand worms, and much more.
Much like the other non-permanent creative ideas, you can use a camera to capture your creations meaning that you will always have a reminder of your work. At Hand Made Places we have a selection of sand pits which will make it easier for you to get creative in this manner, especially since many of us don’t have our own beach to take advantage of!
5. Dance!
As previously stated Children’s Art Week isn’t just about pictures and sculptures. It is about all visual arts! What better way to end the week than by doing some interesting dances?
Dance is a great way for children to express themselves and more often than not the children will love getting up and showing you their moves.
For those who don’t enjoy dance why not get them involved in the art of dance by encouraging them to play music alongside the dancer. At Hand Made Places we have a range of outdoor musical instruments which you can use to add sound effects to performances. Great for children who enjoy different types of artistic expression.
So why not give our list of activities a try this Children’s Art Week?
Allow the pupils at your school the freedom to express themselves using a range of different artistic mediums. With Hand Made Places and our wide range of playground equipment the possibilities are endless.