Create a Children's Creativity Craft Center

Creating an area where your child can explore their imagination and create things is such a great way to help your child's development. For starters, it allows your child to feel like they have their own space in the house dedicated to them. It gives them an area where they can be messy in a good way and learn how to use their creative side. It also allows the parent to be able to watch their child's imagination at play. A creativity center is ideal for toddlers up to tweens and even beyond. I'm an adult and I have a creativity center for myself that is dedicated to my passion for scrapbooking and paper crafts. Of course, as time goes by and your child gets older you will need to update your creativity center. In this article, you will find ideas on how to create a children's creativity craft center for toddlers and young children as well as ideas on how to update it as children age.

A creativity center does not have to take up a lot of room in the house. All you need is a corner of a room. The first thing you need to do when your planning on making a creativity center for you child is to consider where you want it. Think about cleaning up the messes off the floor like little pieces of paper and play dough that fall on the floor. You will want consider putting it in a room that has an easy to clean floor like a tile or linoleum floor. However, wood floors and carpeted floors work fine as well but you may want to put down a throw rug under the work area or a piece of plastic on the floor to prevent stains or messes on your good flooring. I prefer to choose a room that gets a lot of use to put the creativity center in because you can keep an eye on what the kids are doing while you do other things. A corner of the kitchen or living/family room are areas that are used a lot however, you might also be one that likes to have the kids make a mess in a room that doesn't get a lot of use so you might consider a corner of the laundry room, mud room, recreational room or even a corner of their bedroom.

Once you have picked your space you will need a work area, for younger children the youth tables and chairs that you can find at ToysRus, Walmart or even your local dollar store. These tables are ideal for toddlers up to about 8 years old or so. Most of the metal sets have a plastic coating on the seats and table top which make them ideal for crafting because they are easy to clean. The wood tables are nice as well. They are a bit sturdier and pretty easy to clean but you might end up with more stains on the wood table. But the way I see it, it's a craft/art table...it's supposed to get messed up!

Next you will need a few storage bins or a small dresser to store your craft and art supplies. Having some open wall space in the corner would also be nice to hang up artwork the children make or to put up a chalk board or dry erase board.

Basic supplies to have in your craft area are:

- Crayons
- Markers
- Safety scissors
- Glue bottles and sticks
- Pencils and colored pencils
- Construction paper
- Drawing paper or copy paper
- Lined writing paper
- Activity and coloring books
- Paints
- Puzzles and games

Additional supplies that you may want to add to enhance creativity:

- Ribbon
- Patterned paper (scrapbook paper)
- Glitter
- Sequins
- Fabric or paper flowers
- Gems
- Playdough
- Craft sticks
- Foam and foamies
- Punches
- Crayola Color Wonder Products (These products are so awesome, no mess and a lot of fun, the only down side is that you can end up spending a lot of money but I have to say it is worth it especially for toddlers and preschoolers who aren't that great with paints and markers.)

Unique supplies you might normally think of:

- Paper plates
- Toilet and paper towel tubes
- Paper lunch bags

As the children get older you will want to add some new stuff to the creativity center, things that are more age appropriate. You can do things like change out the play dough for modeling or polymer clay. Change out safety scissors for regular scissors, pinking shears used in scrapbooking and paper trimmers. Add beads and charms for young girls to make jewelry.

There are also some awesome crafting kits that you can purchase for older kids that are a lot of fun.

- Awesome Origami Kit

- Cast and Paint Kit- Signature Pitch

- My First Sewing Kit

- Silk Screen Factory Kit

- Dome Terrariums-Fairy Triad

- Cast and Paint Kit-T-Rex Skeleton