Lockdown activities to inspire creativity
Activities to inspire creativity
The kids and myself are often found allowing our creative juices to flow. I have written and shared various crafty based things we have done previously. From street art on canvas through to slime making.
Thanks to Nanny having a clear-out of her card craft stuff a few weeks ago, the little lady and I have been flexing our card craft and stamping muscles of late. Friends, family and teachers can all testify that our skills have improved the more we persevere.
Lockdown
Keeping the kids entertained and busy during lockdown hasn’t been easy for any parent. Not only for our sanity but it has been vital for their mental health. It has also probably been the hardest part too. Juggling work, home learning and housework, has been fairly challenging over the last year. So adding activities to inspire creativity to the list was tricky.
Thankfully there does seem an end in sight and normality (whatever the new normal turns out to be) may begin to return by summer this year. I know for me, the kids returning to school was a huge step in the right direction.
Freedom
During dinner the other night the subject of being allowed to do stuff again popped up in conversation. Without wanting to harness their enthusiasm, I did my best serious dad bit of explaining that come summer, we will still be socially distancing and probably wearing masks.
We then discussed that the ‘new normal’ would essentially mean that the rule of 6 will be dropped. So we could meet up with more friends and family but still follow what has now become standard guidelines.
Party time
Later that evening the little lady came to me with a ‘really, really, really good idea’
‘We can have a massive party!’
Just the mention of the word party, instantly made my anxiety levels rise. But I heard her out and to give her the credit, it was a great idea, and as good as we were going to get for a party.
Street Party
She wants to have a summer holiday street party. The kids could all get together and play, the adults could enjoy each others company from a safe distance and catch up over a cuppa or a glass of wine.
From an adults perspective, planning, talking to neighbours and potentially approaching the council about road closures are the forefront of planning this. From the little lady’s side of the desk, invites were the order of the day.
Queue the A-Team music……..
Firstly we headed over to Font Bundles to download some of their amazing fonts from the free fonts collection and straight over to Canva to start getting creative.
For those that don’t know Canva is a free online design program, it gives you the option to design almost anything from posters to social media images from a stack of stock designs or you can create your own.
Font Bundles is a fabulous website where you can download font sets to add to other software such as the Google Suite or Canva. Once you have signed up, you simply browse through all of their fonts, pick the ones you want and download them.
Activities to inspire creativity
Websites like this give you so much choice when it comes to using free design programs on the internet because they tend to only have very basic fonts. Over at Font Bundles, they have a large range of FREE fonts too.
The little lady sat for a good 45 minutes carefully choosing a selection of fonts that she wanted to use. In the end, she decided to go with some fun styles. Plus a more ‘sensible’ font because she felt that would appeal to the adults.
Creative Time and IT Lesson
She has used Canva before over lockdown, so was familiar with the layout and the way it worked. If you
haven’t, don’t panic. It is simple and pretty easy to pick up.
A couple of hours later and she proudly handed me the finished result, together with a plan of how we could all get together safely and celebrate the summer with our neighbours.
Before I knew it, we had spent the afternoon, being creative, upping our computer skills. However, more importantly, thinking about what some of our friends and neighbours may have been going through over the last twelve months.
I couldn’t have been prouder. Not to be deterred by the likely restrictions that may apply as we start getting back to normal. She managed to concoct a plan that allows people to safely get together and have some fun.
For clarity Font Bundles approached me to review their website and remuneration was received. However, the view is my own and I can genuinely say that we will be returning to the site and utilizing the fabulous selection of fonts available. If you wanted to know the one that the little lady used I have shared links below.
https://fontbundles.net/free-fonts/regular-fonts/yummy-burger-a-handmade-delicious-font
https://fontbundles.net/free-fonts/regular-fonts/baby-crab-quirky-handwritten-font
https://fontbundles.net/free-fonts/other/happy-birthday-font
