Recipe for Creativity

An easy and exciting way to engage your learners at home over school vacations is to create a Creation Station a.k.a. maker space at home. Set aside a corner in your home for as a dedicated place for your innovative minds to create.

Suggested Ingredients:

• 1 old table you don't mind getting dirty or a cheap vinyl table cloth to protect your dinner table or counter
• Paper Towel and TP tubes
• Masking tape
• Glue sticks
• Scissors
• Packing boxes and material
• Scrap fabric
• Construction paper
• Egg cartons
• Cereal boxes (much of what your recycling bin contains can spark the imagination and transform)
• Paint
• Markers and/or crayons
• Scotch tape
• Glue guns (with some guidance and parental oversight)
• Stapler
• A utility cart or box to store and tuck away the materials
• Graph paper
• Protractor
• Compass
• Pencils 

My own kids spend hours creating with their imaginations while I'm getting work done or finally am able to sit down and read a book and relax. Our creation station is always open at our house. We prefer to have it in the kitchen so the kids can be working on something A) where we can see (especially if they are using a glue gun)  B) I love listening to their conversation and thought process while they're creating C) It's nice to all

be working on different things side by side in the same room. While this is works for our family, it may be nice to have it in an out of the way, quiet space of the house. As a child I used space in my basement to build furniture and houses for my dolls out of reclaimed materials. Often times, it is just where you have the area to carve out a dedicated space.

Benefits: There's a lot of research that shows open ended free play of this nature translates to so many areas of kids lives and promotes skills that follow them into adulthood. One of the most important benefits is being able to set their own goals and see them through without having someone else directing them.