CREATIVITY and CHILDREN: A Natural Combination
by Alberta Johnson

Well, it's back to school time again. Parents and children are slowly gearing up... You can see it as they hustle and bustle through the neighborhood stores, cruising the aisles, looking for back-to-school bargains. Parents are generally happy that school will be starting up soon. And occasionally, so are the kids.

All of us can probably remember how great it felt when we were in grade school and drew or painted a picture of our house or a special friend. Why did that feel good? Because you were tapping into that special place inside each of us that wants to create and express ourselves. Those were your creative juices flowing through your mind-- sometimes gently, and sometimes in an excited manner!

There seems to be a growing need to promote creativity in school-age children. Creativity is being discussed in almost every realm: books, articles, tv and radio programs and the work place. Creative arts and crafts can be used to teach reading, writing, history, etc. We need to get the word out to many teachers on how to use art in teaching more than just art. The arts are extremely important--very basic to the total learning experience. They are a means of self-expression: a way to communicate ideas, feelings, beliefs, attitudes, and values. Some of the values we get from creative expression include self-discovery, self-reliance, and enthusiasm. We also learn to use our leisure time constructively.

The aim should be to provide parents and teachers with qualitative art education guidelines to help give purpose and structure to art programs. (And for those of you who want to do art projects with kids just for the fun of it, special art lessons can provide hours and hours of creative fun!)

We know that integrating art in education will greatly expand the minds of children. It will boost their self-esteem, and even make learning other subjects a little easier.

Prepared art lesson plans will help you enrich and reinforce all aspects of an art program at school, or art projects at home, and make teaching and learning more fun for you and your children or students.

Alberta Johnson is the Editor/Publisher of "K-6 Art Lesson Plans", a web site that offers weekly art lessons geared towards Kindergarten through 6th grade children. These lesson plans have goals, objectives, assessments, and color photos. Children have great fun with them, and parents, teachers, scout/club leaders love them, too. Consultations are also available. For more information visit K6ArtLessonPlans.com

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Artists Helping Children is a Children's site dedicated to comforting children by empowering artists and others to donate artwork, donated murals, donated art supplies, donated toys and a lot of love to sick and needy children. Artists Helping Children also helps artists by giving them information on how they can help the sick and poor children by volunteering to paint murals and other art for hospitals, shelters, clinics, etc. No child should ever have to be sad or have to suffer, that is why we hope that more artists and individuals will help bring colorful art to white walled institutions. We also give you ideas on how and where to donate crayons, colored pencils, clay, markers, paper, and other arts and crafts supplies ... such as what hospitals and shelters you could use these arts supplies to bring a little hapiness and joy to these childrens' lives and to so many white-walled institutions. We also have filled this site with free coloring pages & coloring printouts for children to color with as well as 1000s of free arts and crafts projects for kids to use when they need some crafts ideas. Read Charity Articles