The Joy of Creativity - Family Art Activities

A fun, creative and wonderful way to decorate a child's room or playroom. (Just be sure not to be too directive. The theme should come from the child or children involved.) Having the family paint a nursery mural is also a great way to get older children involved in adjusting to the arrival of a new baby.

Can't paint the walls where you live? You can paint a mural on a large bed sheet. You can also create a different fabric or bedsheet mural for every season or holiday. You can also ask guests to sign their names on it (a sharpie works well for this) and you will have a unique holiday memento of the occasion through the years.

After it dries, it can be adhered to the wall with a starch solution. It will remain secure but easily removable. And the starch will wash off the wall easily. You can also use a strip of velcro across the top to attach it. The soft side of the velcro goes across the top edge of the back of the mural. The other half can be attached to a piece of wood (the wood would have to be hung on or attached to the wall), wrapped around a long curtain rod or bamboo pole, or hung with tab tops or ribbons tied onto a rod.

If you live in an apartment, want to rotate different murals, or move frequently, you can also take the mural with you and re-hang it in your new home. This also helps children adapt to their surroundings and feel at home in the new location.

This is also a project that can be done in stages over time if you prefer to plan it first and not create a spontaneous work of art. You can have a brainstorming planning session for ideas about what to paint, what colors to use, and so on. (Measuring the area or size of the finished mural and creating the same proportions scaled down to fit a piece of paper is a lesson in itself.) Then make a smaller painting or drawing of the project that can be enlarged and transferred to the wall by hand or projected onto the wall to copy. To transfer the drawing, determine the scale (for example if you use 1 inch = 1 foot, you would take a pencil and draw a grid of 1 inch squares on the drawing and a grid of 12 inch squares on the wall (use a level and t-square to keep the grid straight and accurate). You can then easily enlarge the drawing it on the wall square by square.

Even young children can make greeting cards (younger kids love potato stamping!) make paper chains to trim a Christmas tree or decorate for a birthday party, make Halloween masks from paper plates, and so on.