Blog — Sidewalk Chalk Toys
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!
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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!
GUEST BLOG: Connect With And Engage Your Grandchildren
Once in a while we love to feature a guest blog post and we do have a number of awesome grandparents who love Walkie Chalk - so, today we have our friend Denise Long and her wonderful post about how to engage with your grandchildren (feel free to also use a Walkie Chalk too! - Enjoy!
Connect With And Engage Your Grandchildren
Grandparents who have the opportunity and ability to spend time with their grandchildren have the ability to enrich lives and pass on family and cultural knowledge. Some grandparents, however, wonder how to stay relevant in kids’ lives these days, where technology and other distractions seem to drive wedges between generations. Although it requires a little work and planning, it is quite possible, and important, to connect with and engage grandchildren. Here are some tips on how to attract their interest and ideas on how to keep grandkids busy and interested.
Keep the goal simple
In connecting with your grandchildren, resist the temptation to be a super grandparent. Kids want and appreciate your time, will often be fascinated by your stories, and will want to spend time with you - although you may be competing with a device for attention. In order to make the process easier, focus on fun activities that are safe and that have an incidental educational aspect. You’ll likely find that the educational experience is a two-way street.
Teach a hobby
If you have a favorite hobby, such as gardening or woodworking, enjoy the time you spend with your grandchildren by passing on some of your interests. By learning your hobby, your grandkids will learn something special about you while they also learn a new interest or skill. If your children do not share your hobbies, then the activity may be completely foreign to your grandchildren. Some hobbies can spark interests that will last a lifetime. Woodworking, for example, may introduce a child to carpentry and other building maintenance skills, which are invaluable in life and can make a solid foundation for employment.
Gardening is a hobby that can be lost on younger generations who many say have lost their connection to food. With hectic schedules, weekday meals often come from fast food restaurants. Gardening combines science with the outdoors and culinary arts.
Teaching children about food can also extend to the kitchen. Families often have legacy recipes. They can be culturally important and you are the closest connection your grandchildren likely have to their roots. Seize the opportunity to pass on some recipes. When children learn to cook for themselves, there is a combination of joy - from eating tasty food - and health - from eating more wholesome meals. To ensure the kitchen time stays fun, make sure your kitchen is kid friendly, as safety is always the first priority.
Bring science into play
Kids love to discover. There are many ways to incorporate scientific discovery and knowledge in simple play games. Many kids these days are infatuated with DIY crafts and slime-making. To older generations the idea of making big vats of goo may seem ridiculous, but these slime-obsessed kids are learning about science in an artistic way. There are numerous tutorials online about how to make slime, but if your grandkids are in elementary or middle school, they will likely know all about it, have their own favorite recipe - maybe even an Etsy shop and a YouTube channel dedicated to their hobby.
Other fun, and messy science activities include making puffy paint. Since you are the grandparents, you can relax. Let the kids make a big mess - you should put down drop cloths and have everyone wear smocks - you can then teach them the importance of cleaning up.
Teach important lessons
Besides fun and games, grandparents are uniquely able to impart life lessons to their grandchildren. As the elder leaders of your family, you will already have a certain level of respect. Kids will look up to you, your achievements and honor you for being the foundation of your family. Use this opportunity to teach kids the benefit of hard work, and importance of giving back to their communities. Grandchildren may also not be aware of the hardships of life - that you may be closer to because of your own experiences or those of your parents. Without lecturing, share with your grandchildren the importance of counting their blessings.
Grandchildren are one of these blessings. And if your grandchildren are fortunate enough to live near you and have you in their lives, make your time together count. Have fun, learn, make some messes, and connect generations.
Denise Long of GrandMothering
Photo Credit: Pixabay
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
