Clare and Arty’s Creation Station Journey

Following Clare and her 2-year-old son called Arty’s experience of Creation Station classes. To read Clare and Arty’s first and second week at their Creation Station Classes- click here and to find out how they get on in future classes follow our blog.

Week 5 Little Explorer Classes: 

“Arty was on holiday this week and so we missed ‘Creation Station’ today.”

Week 6 Little Explorer Classes:

“Final week and sadly we were unable to attend due
to ill health. Arty was so poorly and I had so wanted him to go but in the end he just wasn’t well enough and I didn’t want to give his germs to the other children. This was our last session of the 6 week block, but we will be
definitely attending more sessions when the new term starts.”

                 

Summary

As a family, we’ve really had a great experience so far at Creation Station. We really enjoy being around Helen as she is such an easy, relaxed person to get along with and always has a smile for everyone. Arty is a really energetic two year old. Whilst the other children were happy to sit and do some art activities, Arty enjoyed them for a short time and then would be looking to run around and we often had to keep bringing him back to the art, but once focused and concentrating on something, he would be fine. Even for energetic and restless children like Arty, there was still much to glean from the experience and he would always finish something and be very proud to bring it home. He has 4 pieces of Creation Station art around his room and he loves it. We often see Helen around town at events and promoting Creation Station in some way or
another and we pop over and do some art and say hello. I think she is a face of the ‘promotion of creativity in children’ in Haverhill now, and that’s so nice. We do still go to some sessions and enjoy it. I think Arty gets so much out of it developmentally, his fine and gross motor hand and eye co-ordination, maths with colours and shapes, literacy – paintbrush strokes and language and communication, listening to the music. The emotional benefits are tremendous as he gets complete autonomy to express himself through the medium of art and creativity, he gets a sense of self-worth and pride in his accomplishments and of course, he benefits socially, by interacting with Helen, the other children and other parents.

I would like to say thank you so much for the gift of Creation Station. I’m so glad it’s come to our town and I can see it being a big part of children’s events and on the clubs timetable for many parents and little artists alike. I hope you like the blog and photos, all that’s left to say is thank you and best of luck for Creation Station!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Love from,

Clare, Arty, Poppy (who has done art activities with Helen at town events) and sometimes daddy!) 🙂 x

Classes are designed to help inspire your little one through journeys of exploration discovery and development.

Creation station has the following classes and events available:

If you would like to come along and enjoy the fun with your little one pop your details below and we’ll let you know the details of local classes and events.

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Follow our blog for more exciting activity ideas to do at home to help inspire your child. For local award winning classes, parties and events visit your local creation station for hands-on inspirational classes.

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Clare and Arty’s Creation Station Experience- Week 3 and 4

Following Clare and her 2-year-old son called Arty’s experience of Creation Station classes. To read Clare and Arty’s first and second week at their Creation Station Classes- click here and to find out how they get on in future classes follow our blog.

Week 3 Little Explorer Classes: 

“Arty discovered the colour yellow this week. So sunny and bright! Everything was yellow, shapes, paint, bricks, balls, lots of different textures and interesting toys and other things to use in making a wonderful ‘creation’. Arty was a little bit hyperactive this morning. He enjoyed doing some painting and then he enjoyed running around the room much to my horror, but Helen was great, she put me at ease and told me that it’s okay, he’s just being a little boy and lots of children are like this. Not a problem at all. Phew! We painted our feet and made sunflowers. It was a lovely session and even though Arty was on the move a lot during this one, he still got lots out of the art on offer :)”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 4 Little Explorer Classes: 

“This week, Arty was a lot more settled and eager to see what was in Helen’s box. He sat with the others and did the ‘Creation Station’ song with Helen and he did all the actions as well. Love the use of words like ‘creation, station, imagination and develops’ in the song. It sets the mood and lets the children know that it’s time to settle in and get ‘creating’ for the next hour. Then, of course the familiar Creation Station CD is played and this always sets a lovely tone for
the whole session ahead. Right, down to business and today’s theme is the colour… Blue! Arty is excited. He sits straight down in his little red overalls and gets to work, smearing large splodges of blue paint all over a huge piece of wallpaper. He rolls blue balls through the paint and he paints blocks with letters of the alphabet raised on them, then prints them onto the paper and we say each letter as he does it and encourage him to have a go too. Helen tells us to ask him what colour the sky is, what colour the sea is and then we start to make ‘sea’ and watery scenes onto smaller pieces of paper for what will be our aquatic picture scene. Arty is given tissue paper and we roll it into little balls and use PVA glue to stick them onto the paper as well. We cut little pieces of coloured paper, triangles, circles and then we also stick them onto the picture. Arty is encouraged to have a go. He loves cutting and sticking now and he didn’t know how to do this before. He is really keen to try now and is better every week. We went home with a very nice, colourful ocean scene picture. And a very proud two and a half year old. I love how Creation Station encourages parents to get involved and sees the importance of developing parent creative skills and confidence in doing Art with their children. We also, feel a huge sense of pride and building bonds with our children and understanding their individuality and needs.”.

Clare Reeve- Artys proud mummy

Classes are designed to help inspire your little one through journeys of exploration discovery and development.

Creation station has the following classes and events available:

If you would like to come along and enjoy the fun with your little one pop your details below and we’ll let you know the details of local classes and events.

Name(required)

Email(required)

Submit

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Follow our blog for more exciting activity ideas to do at home to help inspire your child. For local award winning classes, parties and events visit your local creation station for hands-on inspirational classes.

Follow and like our Facebook or Twitter Page We hope you find this helpful.

Why Imagination And Creativity is Important For Your Child

As one of the founders of the children’s activity association and having achieved the gold standard, we understand the importance of safe, positive and engaging activities to support your children’s development.

With the squeeze on creativity in our education system, it’s even more crucial that we support our children to be creative and imaginative. As a parent, we want to ensure our children have a solid foundation to help them grow develop and blossom. Starting creative activities at a young age and continuing through childhood, can support your child in all the key areas of their development. That’s what we are passionate about at Creation Station. providing your peace of mind and your child positive and engaging activities to help them explore, discover and develop at a rate and pace that sparks their own imagination and creative journey of learning.

We were approached by blogger Jennifer from arTeacherJB who loves what we do here at The Creation Station and has kindly written a blog for us about the importance of creativity and how it can help with your child’s development.

Every parent wants to ensure that their child gets off to the right start in life. Starting at a young age and continuing through their childhood, we should try to encourage children to be imaginative and creative. This will help your child with their learning development.

Every parent wants to ensure that their child gets off to the right start in life. Starting at a young age and continuing through their childhood, we should try to encourage children to be imaginative and creative. This will help your child with their learning development.

Imagination is something we all have and is essential in our lives whether it be at work or home. Children develop an imagination very early on and it is the start of the process that will define them as a person. Raising Children list the key benefits learnt through imagination as: fostering creative, expressing emotions, communications skills, coordination and motor skills, and problem-solving. How a child develops these skills is down to time dedicated to being imaginative and creative.

Children love to pretend that they are something they see on television or read about in books. Events such as the recent Olympics are a great way to fire up a child’s imagination and for a parent to encourage them to perhaps take part in something new. Here on Creative Fun we wrote a post on creating a children’s crafty medal. This is a great activity to do with your children to use in role-play such as winning the Olympics. This combines a child’s imagination with real-world goals and could inspire them in the future. Creative Fun recognizes that children need to have their creativity and imagination nurtured.

The Creative Fun helps inspire children by running fun creative classes that help them develop their imagination. We even organize events such as the kid zone for the Olympics at Hyde Park where hundreds of families came to have fun and learn. These types of events help improve child’s creativity because they get involved with other children who are also involved in the experience. Visit The  Creation Station website to find local classes, book group events or learn how to get your child inspired to ignite their creativity.

As parents, we want to encourage our children in the best way we can. Bright Horizons state that parents can often intentionally or unintentionally hinder their child’s imagination. The example they give is if your child says that they drank purple milk from a purple cow the natural reaction is to correct the child because we are afraid that they don’t understand what is real. What the parent might not understand is that the child knows that a cow is not purple and is instead enjoying their imagination. The site goes on to quote Susan Engel Ph.D. who informs that children aged two and a half understand the distinction between real and pretend and that when in play mode the real becomes unimportant.

Child Care Quarterly believes that parents should tailor their child’s creativity to their age. For example, toddlers are still learning about shapes and colours so it is best to encourage them to do activities that involve drawing and colouring. Pre-schoolers are more engaged with symbols and sequences. This includes activities such as dance and collaboration with other children. All creative work for children is beneficial but it is possible to help your child’s development by engaging them in certain activities based on their age.

It is important that children are encouraged to be creative in different ways. Toosta believes that children’s clothes and activities should not be separate at a young age as they believe that the gender stereotypes are not beneficial and that girls benefit from football and boys from sewing. By broadening your child’s activities beyond what is considered the normal, parents will be broadening their child’s creative capabilities.

One of the best ways to get your children to be creative is to join in with them. Help Guide states that not only will playing with our child help their development it will also make the bond between parent and child stronger. One tip they suggest is to make your child take the lead in the game. This will let them use their imagination in different ways, as they have to explain to you the rules or the world they are imagining.

Imagination is fundamental for your child’s development. All children have imaginations but it is up to the parent to make sure that it is encouraged. A child needs to be guided in life and sometimes this means accepting that they drank purple milk from a purple cow.

Exclusively written for The Creation Station
by arTeacherJB

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Follow our blog for more exciting activity ideas to do at home to help inspire your child. For local award winning classes, parties and events fill in the boxes below and we will get you in touch with you local creation station leader for hands-on inspirational classes.

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Day #100 We Made It!

by Sara le Roux,  Owner and Inspirer at The Creation Station Penistone and District

Wow!

100 Days – we’re almost all done!

It’s certainly been a challenge 🙂

I chose today’s activity to be all about reflection….

When we started this journey 100 days ago my aim was to spend more time with Izzy and Boo developing their creative skills, turning off the television and best of all, to just have fun together!

I’m a firm believer in taking time to reflect and look back on events – ‘taking stock’ so to speak.  We seem to spend most of our days racing around! Whether it’s working, shopping, chores, family – I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve caught myself saying “I can’t believe its Friday already!”

My husband and I have a tradition that began the year we met.  Every New Year’s Eve we take a walk together before midnight. This used to coincide with when our dog needed to go out, but with the arrival of our children we now settle for a sofa chat with a glass of vino.

We sit, we chat, and most importantly we reflect on our past year.

If you’ve never done this before you should definitely try it – just sit quietly for a few minutes, and think about what you achieved in the last week, last month, or in our tradition – the last year!

Believe me, once you get started you’ll be amazed at what an eventful time you’ve had.  It’s always useful to have a close friend with you when you do this as its pretty much guaranteed you’ll have forgotten half the things you did because you were so busy at the time!

I love our annual ‘stock takes’.  It gives me the opportunity to pause and celebrate all the things that we have done (however big or small) and the challenges that we have overcome.  Every year we have been amazed at what we have managed to pack into the last 12 months and by reflecting, it’s almost like concluding a chapter before we start our next one…

We talk about our hopes for the New Year and what we would like to try and ‘get done’ – our big plan for the year ahead!

So with that in mind here are my ‘Top Five’ reflections on our ‘100 Days Of Creativity’ Challenge.

1. I will no longer make assumptions about my children’s abilities – Boo and Izzy manage to surpass my expectations every day and are just plain awesome – I somehow have to learn to let them challenge and ‘stretch’ themselves each day and just be there to wipe some tears and keep cheering them on.
2. Writing a blog is HARD WORK! Nevertheless I don’t regret starting the challenge as without the (self-applied!) pressure to finish it, I might have missed some of the many side-splitting laughter moments that we’ve had.
3. Always have a backup plan! (or in my case a backup child too!). There were certainly a few days when Boo ran for cover when I suggested a ‘make’ so pretty quickly I learned to have a few different activities planned – painting, sticking, and sometimes even creative games, and fortunately one of them would normally peak his interest – failing that, Izzy was always happy to get involved 🙂
4. Keep On Creating – Little and Often! I know from talking to other people, that one of the biggest factors holding people back from crafting at home is the prep and clean up time.  Most of my activities lasted no more than 15 minutes and probably took the same time to prep and then get tidied up.  This can be a little disheartening at times, but I promise you it is worth the effort.  Boo has gone from having a fairly ‘blah’ attitude towards arts and crafts to now being a bundle of excitement (most of the time!) when I suggest doing a ‘make’.  He points out pictures in magazines and programmes on the TV that show people who are painting or crafting and when we are out shopping he always spots the art and crafts materials.
5. Sometimes things just don’t go according to plan. With all the best planning, not every ‘make’ turned out to be worthy of Pinterest.  I could post some absolutely classic ‘after’ photos of the cracked stepping stones, and the PVA sun catcher that we did in the jar lid – but I forgot to remove the inner card piece first!  It doesn’t matter – what counts is that we were having fun and taking part – however it turns out we will have a lasting memory of that day.

So there they are… my Top 5 Reflections.  I could’ve listed so many more though as this really has been a journey for all of us.

But we’re not done yet!

That’s the awesome thing about creativity – it’s a learning ‘journey’ -not just a day trip or a weekend getaway.  Izzy and Boo are changing so much every day and I can truly see how encouraging them to develop their skills to create, explore and problem solve will have a long-term impact on their developing little personalities.

So what next?

Well I’m going to sign off for just a couple of weeks and get things back to something resembling post-Christmas ‘normality’

But we’ll be back really soon with more Izzy and Boo adventures!

For now we’ll leave you with today’s exploration – we spent our time collecting most of our ‘makes’ together (some we’ve gifted and many others just wouldn’t fit on the table!) and remembering what we’d done…….

Sara, Boo & Izzy x

 

 

 

Day #99 Sharing Creativity

by Sara le Roux,  Owner and Inspirer at The Creation Station Penistone and District

We are in our last couple of days of the challenge and I thought that it would be nice for Izzy and Boo to share today’s activity and we could all make something that would remind us of our ‘100 Day’ adventure.

I happened to have a large canvas in my stash so we got to work creating our shared masterpiece….

With an extra bit of ‘Mummy Make’ we produced a really lovely piece to hang on our wall 🙂

Day #99 DONE! 1 to go!

Sara x

Day #98 Stamp! Stamp! Stamp!

by Sara le Roux,  Owner and Inspirer at The Creation Station Penistone and District

We seem to have collected quite a large stash of toilet roll tubes over the last few months so I thought we would do a painting activity to use a few of them up.

What You’ll Need

• Toilet roll tubes
• Sugar paper
• Paint – we used Crayola washable

I squished and squashed the tubes into different shapes before I handed everything to Boo.

We spent some time looking at each stamp and I asked Boo to name the shapes before we started to paint.

We mixed the paint colours and stamped all the different shapes using our tubes.  Boo seemed quite bemused that he wasn’t getting to use a paintbrush but that didn’t stop him exploring his new tools 🙂

A really lovely activity which also helped to use up some recycled materials.

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Activity Time: 15 minutes

Day #98 DONE! 2 to go!

Sara x

Day #97 Pom Pom Shooter!

by Sara le Roux,  Owner and Inspirer at The Creation Station Penistone and District

I thought that today’s make should be a bit of a game too….

What You’ll Need

• 2 plastic cups – stacked one inside the other to strengthen the pom-pom launcher
• 1 balloon – I had 2 to hand just in case we messed up the first attempt (which we did!)
• A pom-pom
• Scissors
• Duct tape (not pictured)

We cut approximately two-thirds of the plastic cups off and then covered the sharp, cut edge with duct tape.

We cut the tip off the balloon and then pulled the cut, open end over the lip of the plastic cups.  We tied a knot in the end of the balloon and we were ready to go….

Put the pom-pom inside the launcher, pull back the knot on the balloon and let go!

Pom pom POP!!!

Boo went crazy for our homemade pom-pom launcher.  He kept trying to fire it at the santa decoration at the top of our Christmas tree and that pom-pom certainly could fly!

Day #97 DONE! 3 to go!

Sara x

Day #96 Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

by Sara le Roux, Owner and Inspirer at The Creation Station Penistone and District

Look what we woke up to!

Boo was so excited – it took forever to convince him that he needed to change out of his pyjamas before he went out to play in the snow 🙂

You’ll never guess what we made today……

Mr Snow Banana!

After a busy couple of hours we had to drag him back in for some lunch and a bit of a rest……he was not a happy bunny – he just loves the snow!

Day #96 DONE! 4 to go!

Sara x

Day #95 Sofa Snack Garlands!

by Sara le Roux,  Owner and Inspirer at The Creation Station Penistone and District

After another day of food, family and festivities, we were all tuckered out!

Here is our sofa-based ‘make’ that we did along with a family film to end our lovely Boxing Day.

What You’ll Need

• Microwave popcorn – I know it’s a bit lazy but after a busy day, shortcuts sound awesome!
• Needle
• Cotton thread

After a very exciting few minutes using the microwave, Boo ended up with a lovely big bowl of hot popcorn.

With a needle and thread, we settled in for a movie, a popcorn garland ‘make’ and hopefully (probably) a bit of a feast…..

Threading Our Tasty Materials!

Popcorn Garland – Still a bit small but somebody kept eating it!!

Day #95 DONE! 5 to go!

Sara x

Day #94 Merry Christmas Thank You’s!

by Sara le Roux,  Owner and Inspirer at The Creation Station Penistone and District

This year was our first Christmas where Boo knew all about ‘Santa’ coming and he was so excited….. we’ve never been able to get him bathed and into bed so quickly!! How high were the excitement levels in your house?

After all the family had headed home, it was time to get some ‘Thank You’ cards written…..

What You’ll Need

• White A4 card folded in half
• Ink pad – we used a washable ‘child friendly’ ink
• Sharpie markers

I drew some balloon strings onto our cards and then we used the ink pad to create thumb print balloons.  Boo insisted that we all created a balloon – even Izzy!

 

Lovely cards to give to everyone to say ‘Thank You’ for all the lovely gifts 🙂

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Day #94 DONE! 6 to go!

Sara x