I recently read The Creative Family by Amanda Soule and I wanted to document some of the ideas from this book that I’d like to implement in my own family.
When I first heard about this book, I knew I needed it because of the by-line: “How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections.” Not the imagination part — I’ve talked before about how I’m not worried about my son’s very active imagination — but the nurturing family connections part.
I often feel at a loss to connect with my boy because, at this point in our lives, his interests are so vastly different from mine and *I* get bored. I want to maintain a close connection though, as I worry that as he enters the schooling years that friendships will ultimately become more important than family. I know I’m not a great playmate and that’s something I need to work on, but on terms we can both benefit from.
So, I got this book when it came out and I read it relatively quickly, for my current book-less life! There have been many, many glowing reviews in blogland, and I do think it’s a good book. The blog that the author maintains — Soule Mama — is one of my regular reads, but I have to admit I don’t read it thoroughly. With more blogs than I can actually keep up with in my feeder, if it doesn’t pique my interest immediately, usually something crafty, then I move on very quickly. I hope that doesn’t sound too callous, it’s just that I can barely keep up with people I actually know and care about, I don’t have time to invest in people and their families that I don’t know. I appreciate their bloggy efforts, but I really don’t know much about them beyond their craft.
Saying that, many reviews have mentioned loving the author’s writing style, but I did find it sort of preachy and unobtainable. Clearly this mama is a lot more into children in general than I am. And that’s okay. There are still tons of good ideas and I like the book a lot. I feel hopeful that many of these projects and inspirations will be excellent fodder for my own family connections.
To start with, Amanda talks about gathering inspiration as a family project, and I don’t know why I never thought of that before. I have my own inspiration box in my craft room, but it is in desperate need of organization. It’s hard to be inspired when everything you’ve taken the time to perserve is in a deep black box and you can’t actually view your inspiration! A few months ago, I did actually buy a binder for this very purpose — organizing my inspirational pages (catalogs, etc) — but I haven’t gotten around to the organizing part yet.
So, project number one from this book I’d like to implement:
Create an Inspiration Wire. (And organize that box into that binder!)
I don’t know if this will take the form of a bulletin board or a wire and clothes pins, but it will be something. Probably the wire because we’re not overly keen on hanging things up in our apartment and I can do the wire without damaging the wall. I think I’ll start with my own inspirational items, explaining what I’m doing to the Boo, and then encourage him to hang up things as well.
In a similar vein, another idea is a kid’s art wall. I have hung up some of the Boo’s paintings and stamping masterpieces on our fridge, but they do tend to get damaged that way. In the same way that you can hang up a wire with clothes pins for inspirational pieces, you can hang up your kid’s art. I’d like to do this not only to show him I’m proud of his creations, but as a way to simply decorate our rather stark apartment! (See previous mention of dislike of hanging things up. All of our art and photographs are still boxed up!)
So, project number two:
Create a Kid Art Wall.
I absolutely love the arts and craft layout that Amanda has in her home. There’s a behemouth armoire-type piece of furniture by their dining table that is full of art supplies. They cover their dining room table with an easily cleanable surface, and the kids can do their projects whenever they want. Our current crafty setup takes a lot of assistance from me to get going, and I often don’t feel like dealing with the cleanup. Not so kid-friendly, I guess.
Unfortunately, I’m not entirely sure what to do about this. My craft space does need some re-organizing but I don’t know that that will actually help this particular situation. I desperately need some more shelving space, but I also know that ain’t gonna happen until we have a house, and even then there’s no guarantee I’ll have any more space than I do now. SO. Need to ponder that a bit. Currently the lad can reach his craft box with no problem and he does ask when he wants to do stamping or painting, so we’ll just assume we’re okay for now. I’d still love to have a similar armoire though!
Another great section is about drawing and creating “art on the go” bags. I have actually been thinking about a similar concept as we inherited a kind of cool portable drawing board/pocket thingy that I planned on outfitting with some art supplies to take with us various places. What I hadn’t considered, and Amanda suggests, is making drawing a special time with special books and materials.
Now, everyone loves journals, right? How fun would it be to take the lad out to pick out special sketch books for both of us, present him with a pencil roll of colored pencils (I’d use Kathy’s design, but there’s a similar idea in the book), and suggest that we simply draw? I love the idea of us doing this not only together, but also that I could be modeling such activity for the lad. So much of what we do involves my “directing” or passively participating that I yearn to do something simulataneous with him.
I honestly don’t know how well this will go over, but I want to try. When we do drawing now it’s usually either me drawing something for him, or we sort of job-share where, for example, he’ll draw the tracks and I’ll draw the train. I’d love to find ways to encourage him to create his own drawings though, so maybe this will provide that opportunity. I’d also like to maybe write some of his stories down. He’s started playing more imaginatively lately and I’d love to capture some of his stories on paper.
So, project number three:
Acquire special sketch books for drawing and writing. (And maybe make a pencil roll to go with.)
Probably my favorite section of the book is about embroidery. I don’t know what it is with me and embroidery lately, but I’ve been thinking about it constantly. I’ve never done it before so I don’t know why I’m obsessing over it. Yet, I am. When I read this section I got really excited. Not only because *I* can learn how to embroider, but I think the lad might really enjoy it as well. Recently I was hand sewing something, and he asked if he could sew too. Well, of course you can! We got out some scraps and needle and thread and he had quite a good time randomly sewing things together. And now we can do even more.
So, project number four:
Gather materials for embroidery for both the lad and myself.
All you need, apparently, are embroidery hoops, blunt needles, burlap for the lad and probably something finer for myself, and thread. Oh and an idea of what to embroider, but we can worry about that later. I have had an eye on Sublime Stitching myself! I’ll probably encourage the lad to freeform until he expresses an interest in creating a picture of something concrete.
Which incidently ties into another idea from the book that I liked. Creating sewing baskets (and knitting baskets for that matter) for kids. Why had that never occured to me before? What a good idea. I do have the vague hope that we can work on independant projects at the same time, as opposed to my always doing his things, if you know what I mean.
So, project number five:
Gather materials for a sewing/knitting basket for the boy.
Other things in this section that appeal: Handmade sewing cards (I’ve never purchased any because I’ve never been convinced the lad would use them), finger knitting (when he’s older, incidently I also want to get him a knitting loom), and, of course, felting. I don’t need any instruction in that department though :D
There’s a chapter devoted to nature. This is something I’ve thought a lot about over the last couple of years, mainly because I feel like my childhood was spent mainly either indoors reading, or outdoors doing… I don’t know what! We hiked, fished, ran, played basketball and baseball, picked pumpkins illegally, rode our bikes, etc etc etc. I might be viewing my childhood outdoor endeavors with rosy tinted sunglasses, because I was an overweight child so clearly I wasn’t outdoors that much. However, as an adult I rarely enjoy the outdoors and I miss it, although not enough to get off my ass, apparently. I feel like I’m letting the boy down in this department. We need to go outdoors more often, and do more than just visit the playground. So this chapter was bittersweet in reminding me what we’re missing.
In light of that, there are a few projects (both from this book and elsewhere) that involve nature that I simply must do this summer! One of the ideas from this book is a nature table. Now, I don’t have space for a nature table or display. But I’ve been pondering the concept and it finally dawned on me where we can do this. On a tray on our dining table! We can go on expeditions to find things, rotate items according to the season, use them with playdough or make stamps from them, etc.
So, project number six:
Arrange adventures to create a nature table. (And then use it!)
The next chapter talks about kids and photography. We have half of this down — the lad loves taking pictures. What we haven’t done is the next step, i.e. organizing and doing things with those photographs. I’ve had it in mind to organize his photos into his own directory on the computer, but it’s honestly never occured to me to actually print them or give him an album of his own pictures. Albums with pictures of family or friends, sure, but photos that he created? Huh. Another, why didn’t I think of that?
I am not sure how well this will go over, and frankly the task of organizing those photos is rather daunting because there are so many and they’re so intermixed with ours, so I’m not sure when that will happen. But it should be do-able to get an inexpensive album and at least start categorizing the photos he takes from this point on, and to print some of them so he can organize his own album. If the idea takes, we can go further with it.
So, project number seven:
Acquire a small photo album, create a directory to store the lad’s photos, go through them periodically with him, and make prints for his album.
Other ideas that I’d like to implement:
- Costumes — I really need to get the lad some butterfly wings and we need to dye our own playsilks.
- Birthday crowns.
- Hootenanny and Art Night.
- Embellishing your clothes — I’ve had plans for a while to try freezer paper stenciling a shark onto a blue shirt for the boy. I really should actually do it.
- Puppet show theatre using suspension rods and old curtains. All of which we have boxed up — somewhere! We could make puppets too, which would be fun.
It occured to me as I’m writing this that I might be giving too much of the book away? I hope not. I desperately want to remember the ideas inspired by it. There are loads more thoughts and ideas in the book than what I’ve listed here. Entire chapters that I’ve ignored, in fact.
I have high hopes that this summer my boy and I can re-connect, find projects that fulfill needs in both of us, and our days aren’t spent longing for what we really wish we were doing. Life is too short, right? Although the boy is pretty hard headed when it comes to demanding we do what he wants to do, I think he mostly just wants to spend time with us. If we’d just make more interesting suggestions, maybe he’d be more open to our ideas. Here’s hoping some of the above will make a difference.
P.S. Incidently the projects may be numbered 1-7, but I don’t plan on actually doing them in that order. That was just for writing. We’ll do them in any order whenever we can!
