Blog — Ideas for Kids

Helping Your Child Navigate a Packed Schedule Without Burnout

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!

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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!