Eco-friendly Christmas Decorations
Each year, Christmas leaves us with great memories and gifts, but also a great deal of waste from wrapping paper, unwanted gifts and other packaging materials. Spread your goodwill this festive season by getting children involved in sustainable ways to decorate for Christmas. There are lots of ways to get the whole family to have […]
Top 3 purchases for your Back to School NSW Vouchers
The Back to School NSW Vouchers program provides 3 x $50 vouchers, totalling $150 for each eligible child. There are limited eligible expenses which you can use the vouchers for, including school supplies purchased from registered businesses. But it can get quite tricky trying to allocate $150 across everything – keeping in mind that each […]
Material Encounters: Ideas for Mark-making and Drawing
By Dr. Gai Lindsay, University of Wollongong When we value children as citizens with the right to experience “cultural and artistic life,” (Article 31, UNCRC) we will intentionally support them to engage in playful meaning-making, communication and self-expression through the arts. This requires that we provide children with quality visual arts materials that will make expressive and […]
Learning, Connecting and Communicating Through Art: The Radical Idea of Art as a Visual Language
By Dr. Gai Lindsay – University of Wollongong “All people – and I mean scholars, researchers and teachers, who in any place have set themselves to study children seriously – have ended up by discovering not so much the limits and weaknesses of children but rather their surprising and extraordinary strengths and capabilities linked with […]
Connecting with Your Kids Through Art
Minnie Zammit is a Creative Arts Therapist and Counsellor working with primary and high school aged children. She writes about how to connect with children through art. As a Creative Art Therapist and Counsellor at Creative Kids Therapy and a Mum of two primary aged kids, one in Prep and one in Year 6; I […]
How to Make a Pompom Decoration
Who doesn’t love a pompom, right? Check out Pip Lincolne’s Pompom Decoration video and download the project sheet here. You will need … a few balls of wool thick cardboard scissors a stick from the garden some ribbon or string How To Make It Cut your cardboard into a rectangle shape as shown. Tie your wool around the […]
Connecting with The Arts is Good for Children and Important for Us All
“Children see before they speak, make marks before they write, build before they walk. But their ability to appreciate and interpret what they observe, communicate what they think and feel, or make what they imagine and invent, is influenced by the quality of their art, craft and design education.” (The Office for Standards in Education, […]
Artforms to Inspire Children
Minnie Zammit is a Creative Arts Therapist and Counsellor working with primary and high school aged children. She writes about various artforms to inspire children below. I’ve seen how art is an opportunity to play, create, find an inner awareness, deepen the process, with expressing and learning things about themselves. Reflecting on the way I […]
How to Encourage Creativity in Children
This article has been written by Dr. Gai Lindsay, School of Education, University of Wollongong It goes without saying that creativity is considered to be important and desirable – in life, art, engineering and architecture and, of course, in education. In fact, taking part in playful and creative activities is a human right (Article 31, […]