From The Plaza Arts center...
While summer typically means traveling, pools, lake days, and fun times outside, many reasons exist to keep your kids creative this summer, too. Research has shown that creative outlets, including visual arts, theater, or music, can significantly and positively impact mental health by reducing anxiety and depression, improving mood, and increasing serotonin levels.
Specifically, getting creative in any way encourages critical thinking, social-emotional skills enhancement, and motor skills refinement in children. Also, taking in any form of art helps young people think outside the box, and research has shown that kids who engage in art are more likely to do well in school and graduate.
For instance, children can see characters and costumes come to life during performances at local venues such as The Plaza Arts Center in Eatonton or Greensboro’s Festival Hall. Seeing members of their own communities perform in shows presented by OPAS, PAPA, Lake Country Players, or the Lake Country Chorus can be eye-opening and inspirational.
At home, imagining a character and playing dress-up allows kids to get imaginative and creative. Just picking out an outfit to become a new character is a great way to get the wheels turning. Kids can create a backstory for their characters to help bring them to life.
Just imagining another person’s story and different experiences helps to develop better social-emotional skills.
Making art is another great way to encourage creativity, on both mental and physical levels.
For example, creating a collage might involve gathering materials like leaves, sticks, flowers, or anything from outside, and allowing your kids to arrange them on a sheet of paper.
Let them decide where to place the components and either allow them to use a glue stick to paste them down, or you can get involved and help with this part.
This helps develop fine motor skills and lets your children make independent creative decisions about what looks pleasing to them in art.
After creating art, how about featuring a rotating art gallery in your home to display your child’s works? Just get some cheap magnets and ask your kids to choose one or two of their special pieces of art per week to display on the fridge or other magnetic surfaces.
This creates a sense of pride in their work and allows them to make decisions. Parents can make a big deal out of “gallery reveals” and perhaps “interview” kids about what the art piece is about and why or how they created it. For an inspirational outing, perhaps take your children to check out “real life” art by visiting downtown Eatonton’s The Artisans Village.
There are several museums to visit in Lake Country, too, with many of them free to visit, such as the Old School History Museum at The Plaza Arts Center, and the Georgia Writers Museum (though closed this summer for renovations). Each museum showcases unique art forms, including the Steffen Thomas Museum of Art in Buckhead, near Madison.
Visiting a museum inevitably introduces young people to new ideas, philosophies, and cultures, while usually showcasing important history, too.
Locally, the Lake Country Arts Alliance (LCAA) strives to help bring creative outlets to everyone. LCAA is determined to celebrate all Lake Country arts, believing they greatly enhance the quality of life for all residents.
For more information on LCAA or ideas to help keep your kids creative, visit online at lakecountryarts.org.