Mother’s Day is about stopping, about honouring mothers. Mother’s Day is not so much about buying as it is about the simplicity of spending time with our kids. Mother’s Day is whatever it means to you, however you choose to celebrate it.

The importance of spending time with my kids was reaffirmed for me last weekend when my eldest daughter Sammi and I were lucky enough to spend a mother-daughter weekend in Noosa. Even though this kind of quality time together doesn’t require a holiday, it was a privilege to be one-on-one with Sammi and create such special memories. I was also grateful to have some quiet time in which to consider my mission, which can so often get lost in the various stresses of our busy lives. I was able to visualise and thereby recapture the meaning and purpose of what I am doing.

On one of our walks, I was struck by the beauty and majesty of the trees – trees being our theme for this term! Like in so many cultures, trees operate as potent metaphors. I was reminded of the macro and micro of life and how, while we often get caught up in detail, it is so important to step back and see the macro of our world. Giving ourselves a wider perspective has a calming and grounding effect.

Trees emphasise a balance between roots, and the idea of being earthed, and having our branches in the air. I try to strike a similar balance in our classes: meditation allows the kids to ‘land’ in class and keeps them rooted, while the loftier side of things comes alive through visualisation and the creative process itself. We need healthy doses of both in order to be present in our world.

I heard an age-old wisdom the other day about how we leave a living legacy through the three actions of living, loving and learning. This of course resonated with me: through artistic exploration and the sharing of new ideas, the kids are not only developing physical pieces but are also cultivating intangible yet powerful legacies.

This was demonstrated to me at our last holiday workshops, which were a fantastic success. We did yoga and used Lego and clay to explore the theme of gadgets and gizmos, as well as producing our own Andy Warhol style portraits. We also made tie-dye t-shirts, which is such a simple but effective activity.

Here is a fun Mother’s Day activity, you can bond over with your kids and create something together. Just follow these steps:

MAKING SUPER EASY AND COOL TIE-DYE T-SHIRTS

We made these t-shirts at our last creative holiday workshop and the kids loved doing it and it creates something really cool and awesome, also a practical item that they and you can use and enjoy.

What you will need:

• White t-shirt (perhaps one for each member who is participating.
• Permanent markers – Sharpie Brand from Kmart are good. They have nice bright colours
• Paper cups (the number depends on how many images you want to create or fit on your t-shirt.
• Elastic bands to hold your t-shirt fabric over your paper cup.
• Pure alcohol with a dropper, which you can purchase from your local Chemist. (you will need to ask the Pharmacist for this)
• A fun and creative spirit and some time to be in the moment.

Step by Step Guide:

• Take the paper cup and stretch the fabric across the opening of the cup and secure with an elastic. (see photos)
• Arrange these cups where you think you would like your circular design to be. You can be creative here and place them on one side in a row or randomly. You can also repeat this process on the back of the t-shirt.
• With your Sharpie permanent markers you can now create different patterns with lines and other shapes in different colours. You will love this part which you can alternate doing with a partner too.
• Take the alcohol and drip it with the dropper onto each of your designs from the center outwards.
• The alcohol dries quickly.
• Remove the elastic and paper cup and voile you have a stunning and colourful design.
• You can create however many you like and also cut and style your t-shirt so that it has your creative touch. 

SHARE THAT SPECIAL MOMENT ON MOTHER’S DAY ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE

Lastly, in the spirit of Mother’s Day, I am inviting you all to post a photo of yourself and your kids to our Facebook page @ https://www.facebook.com/LiveLoveLearn.CreativeWorkshops

Hashtag #livelovelearn and show us what you are doing! The most creative post will win a Full day at our Creative Holiday Workshops in July.

I hope you all have a beautiful, meaningful and memorable day tomorrow and I am looking forward to a spectacular term!

A baby opens their eyes and sees for the first time. What is their introduction to the world of seeing, of colour, form, texture?

From that moment on, we are flooded with images. We live in a visual world, one that increasingly uses pictures rather than words to communicate. As children therefore it is important to develop our creativity and be able to create our own images, and, by extension, our own voice.

Live Love Learn allows children to discover and explore this inner voice through the power of visualization and holistic thinking. They are given the tools to condense the large and chaotic world in which they live into a piece of art that is expressive of their own perception of things; to make sense, visually, of what may otherwise be senseless.

That being said, it is becoming harder to engage children and stimulate their imagination with all the distractions of our fast-paced, technology-oriented world. The following is an insightful article that suggests the importance of giving children opportunities to develop concentration skills and ability to focus.

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/12/age-of-distraction-why-its-crucial-for-students-to-learn-to-focus/

As parents we can give them these opportunities by encouraging creative, engaging activities outside the digital realm. Children at Live Love Learn develop the ability to devote sustained attention to a particular task as they consider the concepts they wish to explore in their artmaking and visualize how these concepts may be realised. The artmaking itself is a meditative process that rewards children with a physical, beautiful manifestation of what they can create by accessing their imagination and developing their skills as young artists.

There are plenty of other ways you can involve yourself and your kids more actively in the world of art.

The Museum of Contemporary Art’s Sunday Family Fun Day (held on the last Sunday of every month) allows you to transform your inspiration from the museum’s imaginary dreamscapes, mystical beasts and sacred shrines into your own artworks. You and your kids can experiment with different materials to make your own trinkets and talismans. It is also a very powerful experience for young kids to spend time in art galleries – anything that gives you a heightened awareness of other ways of looking at the world!

Pinterest is another fantastic source of ideas and inspiration for artmaking activities. Most are so easy but with stunning results, for example bottle painting http://www.pinterest.com/pin/178032991493051506 or this newspaper cityscape http://www.pinterest.com/pin/232076187020876932/ or even this tutorial on making a beaded dragonfly http://www.clickacraft.com/beading/insects/beaded-dragonfly.

You can also make your child’s use of technology a more interactive and stimulating experience by downloading apps that allow them to be creative – for example, Kids
Finger Painting, Art of Glow, Kaleidoscope Drawing Pad, How to Draw…you can imagine the options are endless!

I think back to some of the arty activities I did at home as a child: my mum used to buy plates and cheap nail polishes to paint them; my dad would read us out passages from Roald Dahl books and my sister and I would do our own illustrations. Children crave opportunities to be creative and stretch their imaginative thinking – they just need to be given them! I also loved The Cat in the Hat and would sit for hours drawing my own version of the images from my imagination.

There were large doses of creativity and imagination at Live Love Learn’s January workshops. School holidays are a particularly difficult time as kids do not have the daily stimulation of school; art workshops provide them with this much-needed outlet as well as the chance to interact with other kids in a mindful and energising environment.

It starts with you encouraging your children to experiment, create, design, visualise – and ends with these skills becoming like second nature to them, allowing them to consider the world more insightfully and holistically. We hope we can instill in them, even in the most basic ways, the power of these skills.

Making Paper Maché Glitter Bowls

We created these very stunning paper maché bowls at our September Workshops. They just looked amazing, the kids loved creating them and the Mums just were so excited with what their children brought home.

Why don’t you give it a go at home, when you have nothing to do or on a rainy day. Think of  Live Love Learn and be inspired!!

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

• Plastic disposable bowl  per child
• Glad wrap
• Vaseline
• newspaper cut into pieces
• Atelier Chroma Binder Medium  Watch this useful video http://youtu.be/KtRJYbHVH-A
• Glue Brush
• Acrylic paints
• Glitter any colours you desire

METHOD:

• Coat plastic bowl with vaseline and line with Glad wrap
• Prepare a container of Binder medium
• Place cut out newspaper into a bowl
• Place glitter into a bowl (not to much per child – this goes everywhere)
• Once bowl is lined with Glad wrap you may take newspaper and paste down with binder medium using the glue brush. Keep doing this and smooth down with fingers.
• It is important to do this slowly and smooth out lumps. You will probably need around 5 to 6 layers of paper.
• Once this is done, leave out to dry in the sun or if raining blow dry with a hair dryer. (Mum you will need to do this part.)
• Once dry, apply your selected paints to paint over the newspaper. Firstly paint the inside and then the outside.
• Allow to dry, perhaps again in the sun or with a hair dryer.
• You are ready to add the glitter, sprinkle it on the area you want it on. Make sure you have a paper underneath for the falling glitter which you can add back into your bowl. This is the messy fun part!!
• Once dry, coat with binder medium to varnish it.
• There it is your colourful paper maché bowl.

Now time to tidy up. I encourage the children to help clean up as it teaches them to be responsible and they then know they can do another activity another day.

HAVE FUN AND ENJOY!!