Blog — Chalk Art
5 Ways to Get Children with Learning Disabilities Involved with the Arts
Guest Author: Lillian Brooks
If your child has learning disabilities, it’s essential to encourage them to participate in the arts. The arts can improve communication skills, grow self-confidence, and increase fitness levels. Here, the creativity experts at Walkie Chalk present five of the best options for children with learning disabilities.
1. Music
Participating in a music class or learning a musical instrument requires complete focus. As a result, music is ideal for relieving stress, teaching your children to concentrate, and helping them gain a creative outlet.
In addition, a recent survey produced by AARP found music listeners had higher scores for mental well-being, higher levels of happiness, and better cognitive function. In fact, sixty-eight percent of parents that introduced their children to music rated their child’s ability to learn new things as very good or excellent. However, this was only 50% for parents who hadn’t exposed their children to music.
2. Acting
Transferring energy to performing arts can be helpful to an active child, and acting is one of the best options. Your children can gain confidence, a sense of achievement, teamwork skills, and multiple creative skills from acting.
In addition, acting can boost your child’s communication skills. Around 86% of employees state poor communication is the main reason for workplace failures. Therefore, you should promote your child’s communication skills at a young age.
3. Painting and Drawing
Children often enjoy drawing things; when we become adults, we often stop drawing due to our busy adult lives. But drawing can relieve stress and anxiety in adults, so it’s a shame most adults forget about their painting passions.
With that said, painting is excellent for children. It helps them build confidence, develop problem-solving skills, create a shared learning experience, increase brain development, enhance senses, explore color, and convey individual ideas.
You and your child can also get outside to draw using Walkie Chalk. This fun modification to classic chalk drawing makes it easier for adults to play along. Plus, kids with sensory challenges can enjoy drawing without getting chalk on their fingers!
4. Dancing
Young children have so much energy, and dancing is one of the best ways to focus that energy. Dancing can enhance creativity, encourage socialization, increase cognitive development, and boost emotional development.
Dancing is also excellent for helping your child’s physical fitness. It improves their flexibility, overall balance, coordination, muscular strength, heart and lung condition, and spatial awareness.
5. Crafting
You’ll struggle to find a better creative outlet for your children than crafting. It can improve self-confidence, reduce overall stress, decrease anxiety, raise a child’s focus, and grow emotional development.
Crafting is also superb for teaching colors and shapes, encouraging critical thinking, building resilience, and increasing pattern recognition.
Design an Arts Room
By creating an arts room in your home, you and your children can explore the world of art in a comfortable and familiar setting. When designing your arts room, be sure to include plenty of storage for all of your supplies. And be sure to leave plenty of open space for painting, drawing, or whatever other creative pursuits you enjoy.
Not only will an arts room make your home more attractive to potential buyers, but it will also give you and your children a place to relax and express yourself. Keep track of any upgrades by keeping receipts and taking before-and-after photos because this new addition may be a valuable selling feature when you eventually choose to list your house and move.
Start Teaching Children Yourself
Teaching children is incredibly rewarding. You may find a passion for teaching children arts and crafts when you share the benefits with your children. If so, consider teaching your arts and crafts lessons to children of all ages and backgrounds.
You can work as a self-employed teacher, but consider registering your new teaching business as a limited liability company. It’ll offer you more flexibility, less paperwork, and various tax benefits. If you’re not sure how to start an LLC, use a formation service to avoid costly legal fees.
Get Children Involved in the Arts Today
While the arts are great for helping everyone to get in touch with their own creativity, they can be especially fantastic for children with learning difficulties because they give them an outlet in a world that otherwise doesn’t always seem to take their feelings and perspectives into consideration. You may even decide to start your own business teaching art to children!
The Benefits of the Arts and How to Get Involved
If you want to help expand the mind of your child then you should consider infusing the arts into their lives. By playing music, painting pictures, and expressing themselves artistically, kids can have more fulfilled lives and you never know where the hobby could take them!
What’s the Trick to Keeping Kids Entertained at Home?
(Welcome! Here is a GUEST Blog post by our good friends at Wise Marketing, enjoy!)
Think you’ve got a bad case of cabin fever? Your children are likely feeling it too.
With schools being shuttered, classes moving to an online space, and a cloud of general misery hanging over our heads because of the pandemic, it’s no surprise that some of our kids are acting out.
This is normal; the coronavirus has deprived them of the chance to meet with their friends and enjoy their youth. But it’s our job to help our kids cope with their emotions in a way that’s healthy, and not destructive.
Unfortunately, most parents nowadays might turn to smartphones to pacify their children. We understand the appeal - the phone keeps them occupied, freeing you up to work or do household chores. However, too much time indoors poses a problem. It’s even prevalent enough to be called a disorder – more precisely, nature deficit disorder.
The symptoms probably sound familiar to you by now, and can include increased stress, crankiness and anxiety due to a severe lack of exposure to outdoor spaces.
With that said, how are we supposed to keep our children entertained at home without excessively relying on gadgets?
We can take a cue from people running daycare businesses from their homes. Home-based daycare providers have developed detailed curricula, and invested in toys, arts and crafts, and educational materials all aimed at helping children make the most out of playtime. These have helped the industry develop into a $27-billion market, but that doesn't mean having to spend a fortune just to give the same experience to your kids. Here are a few of their tried and tested activities you could do at home:
Try sidewalk chalk games
At home doesn’t necessarily mean indoors.
Step outside onto your driveway or sidewalk to do these activities. All you’ll need are some colorful pieces of chalk and, of course, your face masks to keep you safe.
There are tons of games you could play with just chalk and an open stretch of pavement. Try some sidewalk twister, tic-tac-toe or Pictionary. For more of a brainteaser, you could even try classic hopscotch, with a few math equations thrown into the mix.
Establish a daily routine
The pandemic has disrupted everyone’s lives, but it has perhaps placed a heavier burden on parents whose kids have special needs.
If you're taking care of a child who requires special care, one thing you can do to alleviate the stress is to establish a regular timetable for activities.
Set specific times to eat breakfast, take a bath, do some schoolwork, and enjoy some leisure time. According to experts, repetition and routine offer comfort and help stabilize most kids with learning disabilities.
This is only a palliative solution, however. Careful coordination among parents, special care providers, and concerned agencies is required to address the children's needs and ensure their well-being in the long run.
Go backyard camping
We’ve already mentioned how important it is for children to connect with nature and the outdoors. What better way to do that than to go camping in your own backyard?
You’ll need some sleeping bags, a pop-up tent, and some blankets to start. Once your camping site has been set up, you could hold a scavenger hunt, and even tell spooky stories while eating s’mores over a campfire if your backyard has the space for it!
Create artwork
Making art is a great way to channel boredom and frustration, and it also helps nurture your children's creativity. Additionally, it can also serve as an avenue for you to learn how they're making sense of the pandemic and their current reality.
For this, you will need some coloring materials and paper. When the kids are done with their art, you can place their masterpieces on the refrigerator door, or even hang them on a cable on your fence to make a makeshift art gallery for your neighbors to see.
There are countless more ways to keep your kids busy at home, and we hope you enjoyed our above suggestions. If you think we missed any fun activities, let us know through our social media!
DIY Chalk Paint | Free Chalk Stencils For Kids
Make your own homemade chalk paint to decorate your sidewalk or use on a chalkboard!
10 Warm Weather Play Ideas with Chalk
As soon as the weather warms, kids are automatically geared for getting outside and letting loose of the winter blues. Chalk is an affordable, colorful, and magical tool of creativity for kids to use when playing outdoors is a priority. A child’s imagination is truly the limit when chalk is involved!
Look Out! 2018 Sidewalk Chalk Art Festivals Are Coming in Michigan
2018 Michigan Sidewalk Chalk Art Festivals!
It may still be snowing here in the Midwest but Spring is right around the corner...
It is, right?
Yes, it is - and that means sunshine, getting outside and finding fun creative things to do with your kids on the weekends. One very cool thing is to check out a Street Art Sidewalk Chalk Frestival - fun and when you see the artwork, it's amazing!
Here are a few really great festivals happening in Michigan in 2018, and Walkie Chalk may just pop up at a few!
June 15-16
West Michigan Chalk Art Festival - Byron Center, MI
June 23-24, 2018
Northville Chalk Festival, Northville, MI
July 28-29
Chalk Art - Downtown Chelsea, MI
August 3-5
Chalk The Block - St. Joseph, MI
2017 Chalk Art Festivals Abound
It’s hard to believe that spring has sprung and the summer months are just around the corner. Here in our Michigan HQ, that means it’s prime time for all things chalk art. As such, we thought what better way to celebrate budding trees and warmer temps than by offering our list of can’t-miss chalk art festivals taking place around the US, now through the end of the year.
Have a look and get out there to chalk one up for fun with friends and family … and don’t forget to take your Walkie Chalk with you!
That’s ten great chalk art festivals to enjoy with family and friends, and plenty of opportunity to show off your Walkie Chalk skills. Whether they are your creations or not, we’d love to see photos of any kind of chalk art that inspired you in any way, so please share via our social media pages.
Happy chalking!