As a former (and still occasional) artist, I love encouraging creativity in my children. It’s so heartwarming for me to see their little hands work with their imaginations to create special masterpieces. There is no wrong way to create art and I think that’s why it appeals so much to children, don’t you?
Art is everywhere and it’s certainly not a waste of time or energy. I started tapping into my creative side at an early age. Not all of my ideas were great, but I never gave up on it and when I found out what I was good at doing, my confidence grew substantially. I never felt out of love with it and I went on to major in Art in college and earn a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree.
Like mother like daughter (and son). Both of my children love to create. Emma has been fine-tuning her motor skills and now can almost color within the lines. Ryan is just starting out but he brought home his first few pre-school projects recently and I was so excited to display them alongside Emma’s work.
I was thrilled to discover Creative Galaxy. Creative galaxy is a program exclusively available on Amazon Prime Instant Video that’s a make-along, create-along, interactive art adventure series for preschoolers.
Arty is the main character. In the very first episode we watched Arty showed us a step by step craft tutorial from supplies to the finished project. He started out by cluing in the audience on the supplies he was putting together. This gets the kids thinking about the possiblities from the supply list and challenges them to use their imagination to think of what he’l be making. After giving my daughter a chance to guess he revealed that he was creating his birthday invitation – and then he showed her each step in the process.
Then Arty discovers that there were no goody bags available for his party. The interaction with the audience is great and it displays problem solving skills. As you might have guessed, Arty decided to make his own goody bags. After watching, Emma declared that, “I want to make the goody bags for my party!”
There are clips that break up each episode featuring real kids’ tutorials. The first one showed Emma how to make paper mache balloons. She actually did a similar project on the boardwalk in Wildwood this summer. We forgot how fun it was, and we never even thought of this as a way to make a piñata; I think I may use this idea for Emma’s party too. So as you can see, this is an excellent program to watch with your children because it gives us parents some clever ideas, too! That’s not something that I expected.
This series is designed to support a child’s natural inclination to use their imaginations, make and create. In every episode, characters use “fix it with art” to model the pervasiveness and importance of art as a resource for life for our home viewers. It incorporates the skills that children my daughter’s age are learning like cutting, tracing, colors and gluing. Emma’s eyes were peeled as she watched each and every episode of Creative Galaxy. I think that she found her new favorite show, and I love that it is inspiring her to create.
I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.
