Blog — Chalk Toys

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!

After a long day working, running the household or completing errands, the last thing you want is to put your hand down on the counter and feel something sticky on the surface. But for many parents? Cleaning up after the kids is part of the job. 

Luckily, there are ways to ease the burden of cleaning and teach your kids to share the load. By showing them that cleaning can be fun, quick and painless, they can pick up clean habits that will make mopping up a spill or folding their laundry second nature rather than a chore. 

One way to teach kids not to fear cleaning is by playing cleaning games  with them while they’re still learning. Check out this list of fun games that can help you build a culture of cleanliness in your home. Take a look!

The Clean Lantern

Link to download this mockup image.

Turn your kids into a superhero who is on a mission to find and defeat the evil Dust Bunny. Create a cape using a sheet, then use this printable superhero eye mask and badge to turn your kids into the Clean Lantern. Challenge them to fight evil using their mops and washcloths. 

Laundry Room Races

Once the laundry is finished and ready to be folded, line your kids up at a starting line and have them race to get their clothes folded, taken to their rooms and put away. There’s nothing like a little friendly competition to get chores done. For added fun: have them shoot their socks into the laundry bin like a basketball before they can move on.

Link to download preview image.

Chores and Ladders

Give each child a token such as a coin or bottlecap and use this printable game board to make cleaning a game of chance. Line up at the starting line and roll a 6-sided die, then move the number of spaces indicated and complete the corresponding task. The game board even includes blank spaces for you to leave blank so your kids can get off the hook, or write in house-specific chores. 

Sprinkler Time

If there’s an outside mess to be cleaned up — chalk on the driveway, anyone? — make it more fun by playing games with sprinklers or a hose. Put on bathing suits, turn on the hose and have fun spraying each other while you clean up chalk or wash the car. 

Link to download preview image.

Dust Monster

Make sweeping more interesting by turning the dustpan into a monster that is hungry for dirt and dust. Print out the dust monster printable, have your kids color it in then attach it to your dustpan with tape. Every time your kids sweep dirt into the pan, it’ll look like the dust monster is eating it up.

Cleaning Karaoke

Turn your cleaning day into a concert while mopping, sweeping or dusting. Use the broomstick, mop handle or spray bottle as a microphone and sing along to your favorite pop hits. Bonus points if you dress up like a diva! 

At the end of the day, creating a culture of cleanliness at home means making it so your kids don’t fear cleaning. Make chores fun for them by making it a family affair that they look forward to.