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Welcome to the creative homeschool podcast. And this podcast I'm coming at you to deliver you a weekly dash of creativity to make your homeschool exciting for your kids. But for you too, we're going to explore all of the different ways to creatively homeschool games, field trips, unit studies, writing activities, Kid businesses, art, and more. I'm your host Julie soul, longtime homeschool mom, shenanigan enthusiast, espresso drinker, and founder and co owner of soul Sparkletts art, I've helped 1000s Add creativity and joy to their homeschool, and I'm ready to help you to ready to get started.
Let's go. Welcome back to the creative homeschool Podcast. Today, let's talk about coloring. So often when kids are drawing, we are ready for them to color it in with these beautiful vibrant looks that we can put on our wall we can put on our fridge, but then we end up hitting our head against the wall a little bit when we see that our kids have drawn something, and you have no interest in coloring it in whatsoever. So today's a really quick episode to talk about what's going on there with kids. And why does that happen? And should we try to encourage them to color it in? Or should we just leave them alone. So here's what's going on. Think of their creative process as a creative Well, we all have creative wells, I think for those of us who find ourselves as introverts, you know that you've gone places. And suddenly you feel a little bit like you want to go home, you want to recharge, almost like you have a battery, well kids have a battery with their creative skills as well. And for these creative skills, especially kids who are about age seven through 10, they use it all to draw these incredible details from their head, things they've seen dreams, they've had things from their imaginations, and then they're tired, they exhaust that battery. So you will often see kids this age drawing tiny, and they're drawing a lot, you'll see them off drawing things. But then you notice that they have all these beautiful Korean colors at their fingertips, and they're not using them. So they have exhausted that well. Now, the first thing you could do is ask them if they'll color it in at a different time. Most of the time, though, it doesn't work does it. And the reason that is is because their creative battery, or well was exhausted for that particular project. So it might feel even more exhausting, like twice as much work to go ahead and color that in. So here's a couple of tips that can help. First of all, sometimes we can tell kids before they get started, I love when you draw and you color it in, I would love to have something to hang up. Often when we start kids off by telling them beforehand, before they even go in. Oh my goodness, I cannot believe you are drawing this do you think you could color in so I could have a little bit of brightness for my fridge, something like that. We'll get kids thinking about it before they start. The second thing is keeping all of them anyway, because oh my goodness, I know my youngest is in this age range right now, the amount of drawings that she has done that are black and white. And they're just incredible. And if I stop and forget about the coloring, and I actually take a look at all of these little details that she's created, I can really stop and notice the creativity is just off the charts. And it's one of my favorite things about these ages to see all of these little things that they can come up with. A third idea is to reduce the paper size. So if you're ever sitting down to do an art project, and you're using a really big piece of paper, they can find that a little daunting. Some of us like if I told you to go out and decorate a wall and you get out there and you think well I can think of something to fill up about a basketball sized portion of this wall. But that's not enough. The wall is just so massive. But what if suddenly, the wall was cut into pieces, and I told you, you only had to worry about this section. Suddenly, it's not as daunting. So when we start off with an art project when we have younger kids using smaller paper, except for when we're getting out the paint and we want those full body movements. That can be really, really, really helpful. And the last suggestion is teaching kids how to color in with out their hands getting tired. Guess what, there are ways to do this. So let's talk about markers. For example, chances are you have markers in your home. Chances are they're Crayola. It's one of everyone's favorite. Chances are they have a pointy tip and a broad side. They're a little bit thicker. It's kind of the markers that everyone loves to have. Now these markers are designed to color in a couple of different ways. One is by standing them on their tippy toe, and you stand them up, you can tell kids that they're dancing across the page. Those are your narrow, really teeny, tiny lines. Now the second thing you can do is say that your dancer, your dancing marker is getting tired. Start to angle it down a little bit. So the rest of the marker touches the paper, not just the point, but part of the side, and then have kids start to color. As they're coloring, though, they're going to color in a wavy motion. So they're going to color out and come back and color back, go out again, almost like these wavy SS like a ribbon. If you ever saw ribbon candy, that's what I'm talking about. Having kids practice this coloring technique is a really great way to get kids coloring without their hands getting tired. Now when you're talking about crayons, one way that you can do this is crans actually take a lot of effort. So if you have a really big piece and you want kids to color it all the way in, be okay with them not be okay with them choosing what to color in. For example, if there's an entire sky, if you color that entire thing blue, it's a lot of work. If you have a crayon without the wrapper, you know one of the quote unquote naked crayons, you can lie it down, and you can color it that way. And another option for coloring the sky, when you have those big pieces, is using dashed lines of different colors, or filling the sky was spirals or something a little bit different. So these are just a few techniques and a few different ways to think about your kids and your students the next time that they're drawing and like a want to color it in and just sit back and recognize and look for those couple of details in there that they chose to add in and say is that rocket ship have something in it. Tell me about that. And just watch the look on their faces as they just been because you've taken the time to notice those little teeny tiny things, instead of that they didn't color it in. If you're loving this podcast, we would love it if you'd help us out by subscribing, sharing with friends and even leaving us a review wherever you listen to this podcast. Hopefully a five star one. This helps us get in front of more homeschoolers such as yourselves who need that weekly dose of creativity too. Thanks for listening everyone and until next time
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
