The Importance of Art for Kids

I cannot express enough how important I think art is to children. Even the littlest of projects may stay in a child's mind forever and help shape the person that they will become. My grandmother was a very artistic and creative woman and started in early teaching us kids to love it too. She enrolled me in my first sewing class, helped us make enamels, taught me how to twist wire for jewelry and make coils (like this) and was always such an inspiration. Her home was very colorful and expressive and filled with interesting things for the kids and adults to find fascination in. She also gave me my first copy of Anne of Green Gables and helped cement my love of reading. I can only hope to instill in my children all of the gifts that she gave to me.

Below are a couple of the projects she helped me with. They created memories that I will never forget and, while they just seemed like fun at the time, it started a love of art that I'll always have.

Age 11: (I wasn't really this talented at enamels. My grandmother helped me quite a bit to recreate a drawing that Little-Little and I had made for her.)


Age 10: (My older sister used to draw this all the time and I wanted to recreate it as an enamel. Like the 80's ponytail?)


Age 7: (This was an exercise in perspective. I made this picture with the assumption that I was laying on the ground with the flower in front of my face and the houses off in the distance. My older sister made endless fun of me for thinking that flowers could be bigger than houses...)


After the kids went to bed last night I grabbed a level and a hammer started changing the art wall around to include my childhood enamels.



I added the canvases the kids made with punches this spring and the enamels I made when I was small (before we found out that the enamel powder had lead in it and they stopped letting me use it. boo). It also brings more blue to the top of the wall and it seems to make the chairs match everything better.



What kind of projects do you do with your kids/grandkids/nephews/nieces?