In the Artroom: Getting Creative with a Felt Board, Easel, and Magnetic Board

With all the excitement of the holidays and Election 2008, I’ve found myself playing with my daughter and crafting with her in our art room as much as possible. I guess you could say that I “need” to create in order to relax and feel centered. Added bonuses, too, are spending time with my little girl and watching her draw from within herself to create something of her own.

For a while now I have been wanting to build a felt board in the art room (I was inspired by this post that I read a few months ago on the Artful Parent) and to make better use of our chalk board and easel. Meanwhile, I also have a magnetic white board that has been lying around from my teaching days, and I wanted to somehow bring that into our art space too. Here’s what we did:

Felt Board

To create our felt board, I covered a large piece of foam core with felt measured and cut to fit. Together Annabelle and I glued the felt onto the board. We then used panel nails to hammer the felt board into the wall. Together we cut out felt shapes and other felt objects, like a leafy tree. Our friends Sabrina and Dinah spent an afternoon with us showing us how to use felt characters and objects to tell stories and sing nursery rhyme songs. I am excited to learn more about using the felt board for story time.

Below are pictures of Annabelle with the felt board before we hung it up.

Easel and Chalkboard

To make better use of our easel and chalkboard, I simply needed to rearrange our furniture and reorganize crafting supplies. I repositioned a table to make space for Annabelle to move around her easel, getting to her drawing supplies, chalk, and paint brushes (paint is something she asks me to take out).

Last week, we spent one evening painting spooky Halloween images playing with both tempera paint and water colors. Annabelle is also having great fun with drawing balloons (large circles) over and over again. This coming week I am hoping to experiment with our new no-voc acrylics.

Magnetic White Board

Since we have 2 magnetic white boards, I am planning to cover the second one with fabric (as I did with the first one) and place magnetic shapes, numbers, and letters on the board. Right now the other magnetic board features Annabelle’s artwork, so I think we’ll just have fun using the second board for imaginative play (similar to how we’ll use the felt board for story time).

I am looking for more ideas on ways to be creative with all of our “boards.” I’d love to hear your ideas for how you and your child(ren) or students have fun learning and playing with these kinds of materials. If you’d like, e-mail me at greenmamma@greenmamma.org to share your ideas.