August 20, 2018  by

Invitations To Create: New Videos & Prompts!

Are you familiar with Invitations To Create?

Invitations To Create are open-ended art prompts set up for kids to encourage creative exploration of materials. I first learned about these types of art prompts when I was a Reggio-Inspired preschool teacher and have since used them with my own kids for the past 9 years.

Invitations To Create have been the one tool I go back to again and again to keep my kids engaged with their art supplies and to learn new skills.

I’ve been working on a few new projects that involve Invitations To Create and I’m so excited to share them with you today!

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in Art Projects / Art Supplies / Creative Learning / Creative Projects / Homeschool / News 0 comments
November 2, 2017  by

Join The Family Canvas Challenge!

Two years ago, I was inspired by an Art Pantry reader, Emily, and her family advent tradition of working on one canvas for each day of the Advent calendar. I loved the idea of layering different materials each day on a collaborative canvas and turning it into a fun game that we could do together as a family.

We adapted this idea and worked on our canvas about twice a week for a month. Each time we worked on it, I would bring out a new material, hide it in a bag, and set it out on the canvas for my girls to discover. They loved the anticipation of not knowing what the next material would be!

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in Art Projects / Creative Projects / Family Canvas Challenge / Holiday / News 0 comments
April 19, 2017  by

Family Art Events On The Road

When we began planning this 3-month Airstream tour around the US, I knew right away that I wanted to host pop-up family art events along the way. I wanted to connect with families across the country and share creative activities that might inspire them to bring more art and creativity and into their lives. But how was I going to pull that off?

The best thing about being a blogger is the friendships that I have made with other art teachers and creative mamas around the world. So once we had our trip route down, I of course went straight to my community of art teacher friends along the route and asked them to collaborate on a family art event in their town.

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in Art Projects / Creative Business / Creative Projects / Homeschool / News / Party Ideas / Travel 4 comments
September 14, 2016  by

Got STEAM?

You probably know by now that I’m all about art, design, and child-led learning, but there’s one hot topic where I feel sadly inadequate when it comes to working with kids. That topic is STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math). Thankfully, the new STE(A)M initiatives have added the A for Art so I’m not at a total loss! I have been learning more about how to engage my kids in STEAM activities and am excited to share a new resource that is helping me do this.

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in Art Projects / Creative Learning / Creative Projects / News 2 comments
April 26, 2016  by

Drawing Games With Jeanette Nyberg

If you haven’t already fallen in love with Jeanette Nyberg and her hilarious blog, Craftwhack, go check it out and I promise you will not be disappointed. Not only does Jeanette’s humor shine through in everything she does, but she is incredibly creative and has an awesome eye for design. After years of drooling over her blog, you can imagine how excited I was when I heard she was coming out with an art book for kids! I received a copy of Jeanette’s book for review and am excited to share it with you today.

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in Art Projects / Creative Projects 4 comments
January 7, 2016  by

Layered Canvas Family Project

This layered canvas turned out to be one of my favorite art projects I have done with my kids. It started off as a holiday Advent activity and turned into something we will be doing all year long. The basic idea is to work on one canvas over many days, adding a new material every time. Because it started off as an Advent activity, each material was a surprise, hidden inside of a bag for that specific day. This quickly became a fun game where they would try to guess what the next material would be. If a material didn’t fit inside the bag (like on day 1), I would set it up like an Invitation To Create and surprise the girls that way. Although we tried to do this every day during early December, I quickly realized that it was going to have to be every other day- and sometimes we’d go a few days without working on it. This made it a much more enjoyable experience and helped me realize we could continue on indefinitely! Here is what our process looked like…

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in Art Projects / Creative Projects / Family Canvas Challenge / Holiday 9 comments
December 1, 2015  by

Holiday Family Art Prompt And Advent Activity

One of The Art Pantry readers, Emily Holzknecht, recently shared with me her family advent art tradition. I absolutely love this Advent activity! Emily creates a bag of art materials for each day of the Advent calendar. On Dec 1, each person in the family gets a canvas and they open the first bag of art materials. They use the same canvas each day and open a new bag of materials to add to their work.

This project is sort of like an invitation to create, advent calendar, & art game all in one. I love the idea of building on the same canvas with surprise materials each day.

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in Art Projects / Creative Projects / Holiday 3 comments
August 28, 2015  by

Make-A-Wish Collaborative Art

Last Saturday The Art Pantry team was invited to create a playful family experience for the Walk For Wishes event held at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, Ca. This was a fundraiser for the Make-A-Wish Greater Bay Area foundation to raise money in order to fulfill the wishes of kids with life-threatening medical conditions. If you haven’t heard of them, check out the Batkid wish they granted almost two years ago. Incredible.

I’m happy to say that the event raised enough money to grant 13 wishes!

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in Art Projects / Creative Projects / News / Party Ideas 3 comments