For those of you with younger students, roughly K to 3rd grade or so. What creative stuff do they get to do daily or weekly? It could be anything from writing to drawing, other types of art, music, whatever. I like our curriculum (Bookshark) but it’s really dry. I’m realizing that the kids are hardly doing anything creative like simple drawing. I think it would spice it up. What do your kids do regularly that fits into this category?
2 Likes
We are pre-k, but we do a craft from Pinterest daily. (But seriously simple ones that only involve ripping paper, cutting, gluing and pasting).
I also give him a sheet of “finger paint” paper each week. We color one color per day until it has five colors at the week’s end. It gives us a chance to discuss his colors.
For a little bit older, I would definitely encourage more “free style” arts: drawing, coloring, painting. Go outside and collect sticks or leaves and make a collage. Rip paper and glue back on another page to make something new.
We have “fun Friday”. If my kids get all their work done throught the week (without too much fussing) then on Friday we do light work in the morning and the rest of the day is crafts and fun. I find stuff on Pinterest or books from the library. We talk about different stuff they want to do and make a list. Sometimes the craft maybe from a unit study we just finished. We have an art cart in the closet full of stuff and I wheel it out and they have tons of fun. And you don’t always have to have something planned. Sometimes I pull out the art cart and say be creative. My kids are in k and first grade. This has really worked for us! And motivates my kids to do their work during the week!
6 Likes
Some things we do to spice up Sonlight: Do-a-Dot pages from the internet with bingo markers. Play-Doh. Park day once a week and library day once a week. Field trips. (We are going to a Corn Maze this week!) Colorful blocks, Bingo (color and shape bingo, number bingo, alphabet bingo) Matching games, puzzles. A blank piece of computer paper to color a picture that goes along with the story we are reading. Lacing cards, teddy bear counters. Getting out of our seats to play simon says or ring around the rosy. Duck-duck-goose. Crafts from online.
1 Like
Thanks guys, these are all good ideas. I feel bad that the kids are a little bored at times. Upon their request today I printed out some detailed dinosaur coloring sheets to do between lessons while I was working with the other. That was an improvement! I would love to tie in creative and fun activities to our lessons more but don’t want to put too much work in. LOL.
Hi there! My kiddos are in 1st and 3rd grades this year (along with an almost three-year-old running around too 
) This year they both have an “elective.” My son (1st grade) is doing Lego Education: Simple Machines and Mechanisms for Grades 1-4 and he has a friend also in 1st grade coming over to do this with him once a week. My daughter (3rd grade) is doing a combination of sewing/baking lessons with me and she has a few friends who will be alternating and joining her in these lessons throughout the year as well. (Let me clarify here by saying that hospitality is NOT my spiritual gift, and my house is NOT always clean, so this is a challenge for me this year, but we are giving it a go! LOL! Enrichment activities are sometimes a stretch for me, but I think they will be worth the effort if mama can pull it off, so here goes!
We are also doing music for the first time this year. We are working through John Feierabend’s resources (not his full curriculum) and we are also using the first of his two Move It DVDs to learn the basics of what he describes as becoming “tuneful, artful, and beatful” individuals It is really fun and we’re learning about pitch, timing in music, how our bodies move (through fun games like “glue dancing” where you have to dance while keeping one part of your body “glued” to the floor at all times), learning a new folk song every few weeks, and reading correlating picture books that go with the folk songs, and also participating in the short, DVD-led dances to classical music clips (because where else are my kids going to listen to this type of music? ). So far they love it! That is once a week also.
For art, we do Artistic Pursuits once a week. I try to incorporate books from our library about the artist who created the piece we are learning about that week. They love these lessons. Today they did a lesson on contour drawing. They are continuing to learn about what artists do: artists use lines, artists communicate through their works, artists imagine, artists see detail, etc.
That covers the bases for what we do in these areas. I hope this helps!
2 Likes
One thing I did last year for my girls who were 9 & 7 at the time was make them some drawing tutorial books. I printed free drawing tutorials that I found on pinterest, then put them in page protectors, then into a 3 ring binder. We separated them into categories like animals, people, holidays, etc… When I am working with one of the girls & the other one needs something to do, they get out the book & some copy paper & draw away. Often I find them using the book even when we’re not doing school!
Another thing that is great is the Draw Write Now series, you accomplish handwriting & art in one book. The company also has a series for Draw thru History for older kids.
1 Like
One other thing I have done to keep one entertained while teaching the other (we have this problem a LOT) is to check out from our library (or purchase) the Magic Treehouse books on audio. Then I send one child to their room with a CD player and they can listen to the story while I am in the other room teaching their sibling. Then, when I am ready to teach them, they just hit “pause” and come and have their lesson with me. This works especially well with the younger one who may not be at a reading level old enough to read the Magic Treehouse series but the books are good quality for them to listen to! You could maybe find a good deal on purchasing the audio set on homeschoolclassifieds.com. This way they are still doing something “educational” other than just playing and they think school is a little more “fun” because they get to listen to a CD!
2 Likes
Hi i think this is a great idea i too have PK kiddos what i have been doing is just light work on Fridays and we hit our local library for story time they really enjoy it … can you post a picture to get an idea of what your art cart looks like … thanks
Here are pics of my art cart. It is actually a cleaning cart. I purchased this at SAMs club this summer and I know ikea sells an almost identical one. I don’t have it completely filled up. I actually have extra/different stuff in plastic shoe boxes and change out things in the cart every other week or so. That way the kids have a variety of different things to use and don’t get bored using the same things over and over. Hope this gives you some ideas. Let me know if you have any questions.
7 Likes
A simple way to include some creativity to your days: have the kids draw a picture about what they learned. After I read the assigned pages for history (History Odyssey Ancients 1) and science (Noeo Science Biology 1), my daughter chooses something she’s learned and draws a picture of it. For example, we just talked about Greek mythology and she drew a picture of the cyclops from The Odyssey. For older kids you could have them also write a sentence to caption their drawing. These drawings satisfy her love of drawing and coloring day to day, and soon we are starting Home Art Studio level K (we wanted to start at the beginning), which I am planning to include once a week.
Another thing my kids are loving is we are just starting Brave Writer’s Jot It Down, and we are incorporating poetry teatime (about) once a week. Teatime Tuesday’s are a fun way for us to reconnect and recharge and infuse some life into our school week.
2 Likes
I do curriculum very differently! I do 2 weeks of work on different subjects: Here is how we include creative / artistic / fun things into our curriculum:
Week 1, 2:
Geography / Social Studies / History: For fun they have to watch a youtube video learning about the subject they are studying (I pre-screen them to make sure they are appropriate.) They also make a “book” about the subject / Unit they are learning.
Art: They have to do an art project related to history.
Literature: Read a history based book related to what they are learning (which is great with Bookshark, because that is basically what you are doing!)
Week 3, 4: Science lessons with thinking skills and STEM. They do their science lessons, and then they have to do a critical thinking game (like from think games) or they can work with engino building machines, robotics, legos, making movies. Etc.
Music: Then also have to listen to music - sing songs, dance, or work on learning to play an instrument.
So - those are our fun / creative / artistic things that we add to the day! The kids remember things better, they have fun, and it makes the day go better! I hope that this helps 
1 Like
No sure that this really fits into your question but I noticed you mentioned coloring inbetween…we often use brain breaks in between subjects to spice things up and my kids love it. Our favorite is from the website gonoodle. They have dance-alongs that my kids do! We love pop-see-ko (I think is how it’s spelled) and the rollercoaster. It’s not really creative but if your just looking to break things up for them and add change!!! My kids are 6 and 4!
My son in Kindergarten and first did nearly all his homeschool through playschool (I would teach him pretending to be a toy dinosaur, and he’d pretend to be toy students, but real learning/lessons got done through this. It helped him overcome his fear of anything school related that he built up during a horrid year of public school kindergarten…we repeated KG at home). So, that brought in some creativity.
But honestly I didn’t do a lot the first year except crafts for holidays and a few random art projects. Also he would illustrate stories he made up.
This year we’re using Story of the World for history (I wouldn’t suggest it before 1st grade, unless you have a child with an exceptionally long attention span). That has creative activity suggestions built in.
Another way to incorporate creative projects is to find a popular storybook (anything by Dr. Suess for instance) and then search pinterest for crafts for it, or search for crafts related to the topic (like, for Very Hungry Caterpillar you could look up caterpillar crafts). That works for any topic you’re studying really.