List of the most popular hashtags for theme #ARTACTIVITIES

I witness too many schools stopping play based learning after preschool and Kindergarten. It truly breaks my heart. Children crave play. It’s how their brains learn. Children haven’t changed over the years, society has just forced them to be little worker bees. It’s completely unnecessary and damaging. Let them play. Let them explore. Let them create. ✨ @fortmagic

Sensory Bottles These have quickly become a very popular #invitationtoplay in our studio space. Children of all ages have been extremely curious watching, rolling, exploring, and asking excellent questions. Don't you just love when an activity prompts great conversation? I do!⁣ ⁣ From a teaching standpoint, sensory bottles are a great tool to help kids self-regulate their emotions and/or responses to stress or anxiety. Their mesmerizing aspect offers a calming effect, bringing focus back to one place, serving as a momentary break from whatever is going on around a child. The slow movement of glitter, googly eyes, pearler beads, water beads, etc. falling and moving, or the separation of liquids, provides such a relaxing visual stimulus even to adults!⁣ ⁣ I have loved watching how beneficial these sensory bottles have been helping children transition into our art space. Shaking, swirling and even rolling, the bottles can be contagiously fun and captivating. ⁣ ⁣ Our sensory space is inviting and so many students immediately gravitate toward these colorful bottles. It has been a wonderful tool to begin conversation, letting an unsure child slowly transition in and experience something fun and new right off the bat. They can simply stand and watch or manipulate the bottle themselves.⁣ ⁣ Sensory bottle can also be called "calm down" bottles just for this reason. In times of stress or anxiety, a calming experience like playing with a sensory bottle can provide a secure break from triggers and offer a tool for self-regulation. Surprisingly, occupational therapists often use them in their practice to help children decompress or manage emotion. ⁣ ⁣ After seeing the awesome interest and benefit they have brought to the studio, I plan to make more and rotate them each week.⁣ ⁣ If you are wondering about the bottle itself... It is a hard plastic water bottle purchased in store from @walmart for .99 cents. Each bottle has a different filler that causes different effects; water/glue, water/hair gel, water/oil, etc. Then various glitters, beads, and fun loose parts go in too, to keep things interesting! Then the top is glued tightly with a hot glue gun.

POM-POM PRINTING . Pom-Pom printing is a lovely little art activity and super-quick to set up. To make the pom-poms easy to handle attach them to pegs and away you go. . Miss 3 will happily sit and make pictures and patterns for ages in this way and I would normally leave her to it. . But when her interest started to wane a little this time I grabbed a black marker and put lots of squiggles and lines on a page and she printed along them using her pom-poms and in between the sections of a rainbow. . This not only kept the activity going a little longer but all that precise printing is great for working on those fine motor skills . . . . . . #learningthroughplay #artactivities #playideas #playathome #letthemplay #simpleplay #learnthroughplay #playmatters #earlyyears #earlylearning #playislearning #homeschoolpreschool #homeeducation #preschoolplay #preschooler #preschoolactivity #preschoolathome #toddleractivities #eyfs #eyfsideas #finemotorskills #finemotoractivities #creativeplay #playtolearn #earlylearning101 #mummyblogger #activitiesforkids #earlychildhoodeducation

JINGLE STICKS Pair these beauties with sweet Christmas carols for more joyful noise¡ . All this craft takes is some backyard sticks, dollar store bells and wire, and whatever kind of paint you've got on hand. Although, I ditched the paint tray at the last second when I spotted our @kwikstixpaint tempera sticks and they worked beautifully on wood! . I cut long pieces of wire and secured one end to each stick and let the girls thread on bells and wrap it as best they could. I went back over each one with more wire to secure it all in place. Ring the bells!! . . . #christmascrafts #kidscrafts #christmasactivities #jinglebells #prek #preschool #artactivities #processart #craftmas #naturecrafts #preschoolhomeschool #toddlerfun #reggioinspired #natureplay #oursensorychristmas #dec_playalong

I urge you to embrace brown in children’s art. Too often adults purposefully avoid putting out colors that will mix to brown. This sends the message to children that some colors are better and prettier than others. It sends the message that brown is inferior. There is research that shows that children in their early years of life start to translate these feelings about art colors into their feelings about racial superiority and diversity. Let us work together to help all children of all ethnicities feel proud of who they are.

❄️ SNOW ART well I thought it was finally spring but then it went and SNOWED on us yesterday ‍♀️ so of course I pouted for a while but then decided to embrace the fluctuations of this indecisive season with some snow ART!! . . . To prep, I just cut squares of tissue paper for the boys to arrange on their watercolor paper. I then provided bowls filled with ❄️snow❄️ for them to scoop onto their papers (and, in the process, eat ). It took a few hours to fully dry because they really loaded the snow on there! . . . ❌ You can see from the last picture that we didn’t get the beautiful rainbow I had hoped for because most of the tissue paper we had was the waxy type and not the colour-bleeding type but still quite pretty nonetheless...and this art was definitely more about the process than the outcome anyways . . . . . . . #toddleractivities #toddleractivity #reggioinspired #reggiokids #playathome #playathomemummy #artforkids #artactivities #letthembelittle #sensoryplay #sensoryactivity #sensoryart #preschoolactivities #kindergartenart #kindergartenactivities #iteachk #teachermom #earlyyearsideas #earlychildhoodeducation #ecemom #playbased #playbasedlearning #learningthroughplay #playislearning #wherelearningmeetsplay #montessoriathome #kidsactivities #tagfromtheheart

So today we did a little experiment with paint brushes. The focus of this activity was on learning to create success criteria, making logical hypotheses, and analyzing empirical evidence. That sounds crazy? Let me break it down. 1. So first we went for a walk and collected materials, keeping in mind that we were looking for things that would make a good paintbrush. We brought kid scissors, a magnifying glass and, a basket with us. This took about 45 minutes, 2. When we got home we used gardening string and some grocery store twist ties to fasten the brush materials to sticks. This took about 10 minutes. 3. Before we painted with the brushes we looked at them and made predictions, hypotheses, about which brushes would be the best (most successfull) and why we thought this (texture, strength, etc.) 5 min. 4. She painted using all the brushes and as she worked we discussed her observations. 15 min. 5.Afterwards she determined the one made of tall grass seeds was most successful, and she decided the most important criteria for making that judgement was "easy to use, prettiness of painting and ability to clean it off in water." 5 min . In future I think I would probably establish criteria for success more clearly before hand, but we couldn't have known that "ability to clean" would be important untill we tried it out! The goal with all this is to get her used to approaching creative problems, projects and experiments in a logical way. These are skills that apply to creative arts, STEM, writing, any problem that needs solving. . . .#invitationtoexplore #stemproject #stemlearning #creativeprocess #creativeprocessforkids #steamproject #thescientificmethod #kidssummer #kidssummeractivities #artactivities #invitationtoplay #playmatters #playwithpurpose #kindergartenscience #playbasedlearning #homeschool #preschoolactivities #natureplay #naturewalk #sensoryplayideas #sensoryplay #inquirybasedlearning #inquiry

Hard to believe my original blog post for our Swing Painting activity is 4 years old! My kids still say this is one of their all time favorites!

We’ve been doing these Chihuly inspired sculptures for a few years now. One of my fave projects. All the details on my blog. ✨