The Artful Parent

Bring out your child’s creativity and imagination with more than 60 artful activities in this completely revised and updated edition Art making is a wonderful way for young children to tap into their imagination, deepen their creativity, and explore new materials, all while strengthening their fine motor skills and developing self-confidence. The Artful Parent has all the tools and information you need to encourage creative activities for ages one to eight. From setting up a studio space in your home to finding the best art materials for children, this book gives you all the information you need to get started. You’ll learn how to: * Pick the best materials for your child’s age and learn to make your very own * Prepare art activities to ease children through transitions, engage the most energetic of kids, entertain small groups, and more * Encourage artful living through everyday activities * Foster a love of creativity in your family

Celebrating the seasons provides a wonderful opportunity to embrace creativity together as a family. It’s also a fun way to decorate for, prepare for, and learn about the holidays we celebrate. In The Artful Year, you’ll find a year’s worth of art activities, crafts, recipes, and more to help make each season special. These artful explorations are more than just craft projects—they are ways for your family to create memories and mementos and develop creatively, all while exploring nature, new ideas, and traditions. The book includes: • Arts and crafts, using the materials, colors, and themes of the season • Ideas and decorations for celebrating the holidays together • Favorite seasonal recipes that are fun for children to help make (and eat!) • Suggested reading lists of children’s picture books about the seasons and holidays The 175+ activities in this book are perfect for children ages one to eight, and for creating traditions that appeal to all ages.

55 playful experiments that encourage tinkering, curiosity, and creative thinking—hands-on activities that explore art, science, and more. For children of all ages, from toddlers to teenagers! The creator of the highly popular creativity site for kids, Tinkerlab.com, now delivers dozens of engaging, kid-tested, and easy-to-implement projects that will help parents and teachers bring out the natural tinkerer in every kid—even babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. The creative experiments shared in this book foster curiosity, promote creative and critical thinking, and encourage tinkering—mindsets that are important to children growing up in a world that values independent thinking. In addition to offering a host of activities that parents and teachers can put to use right away, this book also includes a buffet of recipes (magic potions, different kinds of play dough, silly putty, and homemade butter) and a detailed list of materials to include in the art pantry.

Art Workshop for Children is not just another book of straightforward art projects. The book's unique child-led approach provides a framework for cultivating creative thinking and encourages the wonder that comes when children are allowed to freely explore the creative process and their materials. As children work through these open-ended workshops, adults are guided on how to be facilitators who provide questions, encourage deep thinking, and help spark an excitement for discovery. Children explore basic materials and workshops that use minimal supplies, and then gradually add new materials to fill the art cabinets as well as new skills and more complex workshops. Most workshops are suitable to preschool-aged children, and each contains ideas for explorations and new twists to engage older or more experienced artists. Interspersed throughout are sidebar essays that introduce perspectives on mess-making, imperfection, the role of adult, collaborative art, and thoughts on the Reggio Emilia method, a self-guided teaching philosophy. These pieces underscore the value of art-making with children, and support the parent/teacher/care-giver on how to successfully lead, question, and navigate their children through the workshops to result in the fullest experiences.

Help children draw and think more creatively by inspiring them with interesting and challenging art prompts and questions. Invitation to Draw offers 99 open-ended drawing prompts, each one proposing a question to investigate that encourages children to free associate and problem solve. The perforated pages make it easy to tear out prompts for on-the-go activities or allowing multiple kids to draw at the same time. A blank cake provides the chance to decorate a dream confection, an empty house inspires stories about who lives there, and a grid of triangles supplies the chance to explore abstract art. What might be hiding in that tree? What sort of robot can you design? The possibilities are endless! Drawing prompts inspire and encourage kids to think and draw differently, and sometimes more creatively, than they might when faced with a blank page. By offering constraints such as a pair of eyes or an empty car and asking a question, children begin thinking about the possibilities and answering the question in their heads even before they put pen (or marker or crayon!) to paper. And through the act of drawing and observing the drawing unfold, the brain continues to think and problem solve, opening up all kinds of creative possibilities around that specific idea.

Parenting Tip #1: There's no one right way to be a parent. This entertaining parenting guide is the helpful, bite-size advice you need when you've just had a kid. From a list of what you need in a diaper bag to a loving reminder that sometimes you just need to take time for yourself, these tips and tricks reassure parents that parenting is doable and that they're already doing a great job. Chock-full of all the timesavers and support that new parents need, and with fun illustrations to lighten the mood, this shower go-to gives first-time parents the gift of knowing that, yes, they can do this!

With 52 weeks of fantastic art projects using easy-to-find, everyday materials, Art with Anything provides a year of creativity, imagination, and fun for children ages 4-10! Organized alphabetically by material, each week features one everyday material (address labels, fabric scraps, leaves, rocks) and provides five days of unique activities, increasing in complexity with each day. Art with Anything uses materials like buttons, cardboard, hole-punch dots, junk mail, masking tape, sandpaper, and salt, which encourages recycling and reusing! Children will love making ''Glitter Photo Jars '' or working on ''shake-It-Up-Bag Paintings, '' and projects like ''Family Finger Puppets '' and ''Fluff-N-Puff Mobiles '' will keep them entertained for hours and stretch their imaginations. Whether at home or at school, in child care or an after-school program, exploring the process of creating art is one of the most compelling ways children learn, and Art with Anything keeps children learning creatively all year long!

Handmade Books For A Healthy Planet is a how-to book with a purposeto take tiny steps to make our planet more healthy by creating books from around the world with recycled materials. Using everyday tools and easy-to-find materials, children and their families and teachers experience the joy of using their hands, minds, and hearts to make books that tell their stories and reflect on the world around them. With fascinating facts about the history of books and illustrated step-by-step directions, the sixteen earth-friendly projects, including a Wish Scroll from Ethiopia, a Medieval Book of Hours and a Book of Haiku from Japan, promote cultural understanding and teach us to see things not just for what they are but for what they can become.