Iveyrock

There are lots of amazing blogs and website, where kids do really neat things. I love to look at them, both for ideas, and just for inspiration as I work to allow my own kids to develop their own creativity. But every time I see these blogs, I am thinking “wow, that looks incredible. But where is the mess? When does this get cleaned up? Where is the baby who tries to eat everything? What are the parameters that make this possible? How does this all really work, in day-to-day life?”

I suspect the answers are different for each family. Some families have less children, or more widely spaced ages than I do. Others may have great systems developed for cleaning, or areas devoted just to creating. However, since I must not be the only one thinking this (I hope…), over time I plan to share a little bit about how things work at our house.

We do “projects” on a pretty regular basis here. (Projects at our house are really open ended. We use the word for lots of different things, although I am mainly writing about art projects for this post.) For awhile it was pretty easy – the kids asked for something, I got it down, they made a picture and we put it back up. But in the last couple of months, they have become very creative in their use of materials, and need more materials to match their inner vision. In addition, Ian is suddenly able to do a lot more for himself – so he will get supplies down as he needs them. This works out great in theory, but I need to reorganize everything so it’s easier for them to use.

That being said, here’s what works for us right now.
Projects are done on the table in the kitchen, or sometimes outside. I really like this arrangement, because it’s central to what’s going on, and where the kids gravitate to naturally. Supplies are kept on the bookshelf right by the table, or on the shelves in the laundry room. I have the supplies divided into baskets by basic categories (play dough, drawing supplies, paints and brushes, things to glue). I can pull down whatever basket we need easily.

We purposely bought a table that we liked, but didn’t mind getting banged up a little. The floor is tile, so clean up is pretty easy. We have a tablecloth and aprons, for really messy stuff. We use washcloths as napkins, and I have a couple of damp ones handy when projects involve anything that might need cleaned up. Most of our supplies are easily washable, although I expect that will change as the kids grow older.

The kids clean or wipe up the big stuff, and I sweep or wipe down the table when they’re done. On occasion, they hop right into the bathtub.

I think a couple of things allow us to be a little more spontaneous with our projects.

The first is, I keep our schedule relatively clear. I am intentional about not filling our days up with too many commitments. I have purposely ordered our day with a schedule for chores that allows for lots of free time.

The second is, it’s a priority to me. Allowing my kids to explore and create is one of my main goals for our day. So I try to allow them to do projects whenever possible (this is a lot easier since our supplies are organized. I can pull a basket down with one hand, and we all know right where things go when they are put away.) In choosing priorities for our time, there are other things that we do not do on a regular basis.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 7:59 am and is filed under Creating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.