As a parent, it is your job to support and encourage your children’s creativity in any way you can. One of the best ways to encourage your kid’s artistic abilities or burgeoning career as a future novelist is to give them a safe and comfortable space in which they can create. Here are some tips to help you do just that:
Choose a Quiet Space
It’s important that you choose a quiet space where your child will not be interrupted if you want them to be able to create unimpeded. A corner of their bedroom would be perfect for this, as would be a garden shed or summer room, depending on their age and how much supervision they require, but even a quiet corner of the kitchen or the living room will do in a pinch.
The key is to make the space as private and quiet as possible. In the bedroom, this could mean installing kids cabin beds, which feature a private tent or desk space. In the kitchen, you could section off a quiet area using curtains for privacy and to muffle sounds; and obviously, a summer house or shed is pretty quiet and secluded without any extra intervention.
Create a Space that Matches Your Kid’s Interests
If you want to get their creative juices flowing, you need to fill their creative space with the kinds of things they love. This could mean setting up a desk with lots of paints, pencils, paper, and crayons, filling their room with lots of musical instruments or filling their space with lots of bookshelves, books and a laptop and printer where they can create their own writing. It doesn’t matter as long as it meets the creative needs of your child.
Make the Space Stimulating
If you want to encourage creativity, then a boring, bland space isn’t going to cut it. You need to create a space that is filled with bold colors, interesting artworks, great children’s literature and maybe even their favorite music, to get them thinking more about the world around them, and to provide them with the kind of inspiration they need to come up with interesting ideas of their own.
Keep it Comfy
Adding comfy furniture, like bean bags, ergonomic desk chairs and perhaps an easy chair will help to encourage your child to spend time creating because they won’t feel uncomfortable when they do so.
Keep it Organized
The creative process can be pretty messy, which is why your child’s creative space should be filled with containers, drawers, hangers and boxes where they can store their crafting materials at the end of a session. If you can color coordinate storage or use labels to mark where things should go, it’ll make it easier to keep the space organized.
Create a Cleaning Routine
Because the space can get messy, it might be a good idea to create a cleaning chart, which encourages your child to take care of their space, perhaps by incentivizing them with new supplies for every ten times they clean up on time. This will help to keep the space clean, tidy and ready for action.
Have you set up a creative space for your child? How did you do it? What features did you include?
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