Ten awesome family art projects that will help you connect with your children

Fill your lives with some much-needed color.

Being creative together is one of the best ways to connect with our 
children. It is an exciting way to start meaningful conversations, instill 
important values, and generate joy together. Discussions come up and 
bonding happens naturally when we sit down to color, paint, play, or craft
together. 

Family fun activities not only help us gel but also give us a sense of 
togetherness. They bring disparate individuals living under one roof to one 
common purpose, helping us form a union that is not just capable of 
eating together at the dining table but is also equally committed to loving
and working together. 

As we grow older and when we look back, huddling or snuggling with the 
family on the dining table and filling the colours in our lives are going to be 
some of the most cherished memories.

This is much needed in this highly individualistic postmodern world
where most families have both parents pursuing careers and living an 
increasingly disconnected life. So naturally, finding time with the children 
is considerably challenging.

Spending time with our children is essential for their balanced upbringing 
and for developing a happy, healthy, and responsible family. 
But, engaging children requires us to be inventive and fun, especially with
the continuously decreasing attention span of the new generation. Hence, 
we have to create opportunities that will give us quality time together, 
while at the same time, these activities are fun and entertaining for the 
children. 
So, here are 10 fun family art activities that will add much-needed joy 
to your lives and help us bond…

 1. Pots of Fun 

Pottery is one of the oldest crafts that humans have invented, creating 
utensils used to cook, store, and carry food. It is among the greatest 
symbols of human ingenuity and creativity – something very simple, yet 
intrinsically creative and powerful. It is something that can be tried 
anywhere, and your living room, balcony, or terrace could be an ideal 
workshop to get your hands dirty.

All you need is some clay, or even some dough, if you want it to be less 
messy, and a bunch of moulds to give shape to your imagination. You can 
be infinitely creative and make dozens of items that can actually be used 
at home. Take the help of the Internet if you are short of ideas! 

2. Drawing Together

If you like to keep things easy and non-messy, drawing could be the best 
creative activity for your family. There are plenty of fun drawing activities 
you can do together, and it’s a great way to bond, collaborate, and express
yourself. All you need is a big piece of paper and a bunch of crayons, 
colour pencils, or any other kind of colouring agent.

You can also do individual drawings while sitting together, based on a single 
agreed theme, and then take inspiration from each other’s works. This 
could be a great source of conversation and learning from each other. It 
will help you better understand each other’s minds and will demonstrate to you how 
different people see the same thing differently.

3. Pass the Drawing.

If your children are older and sitting together to draw seems improbable, 
you can still engage with them through art by drawing part of a picture on
a sheet of paper or canvas and leaving the sheet on their work desk or 
pillow, nudging them to complete the drawing. 

This sheet can be given to different members of the family, and with each 
member pitching in, you can create a beautiful memory together. This, 
again, will engender collaborative skills among family members, an 
essential trait for people living and working together as a single unit.

4. Creative Cooking.

Inventing recipes together or helping your children experiment with food 
is a nourishing way of adding spice to your relationships and bringing in 
some much-needed aroma to your life. 

To get them started, you can begin with the easy, ready-to-mix recipes 
and then move on to their favourite meals and then to something more 
complex, like chicken masala, chana masala, or whatever you like.   
Think of your kitchen as your laboratory or workshop and try new ideas 
that will not only instil confidence in your children but will also give them
an idea of the rigours mothers go through in the kitchen. It will help them 
appreciate the role played by their parents in bringing food to their plates 
while giving them a sense of participation and responsibility at home.

Creative cooking is also a fun way to help children acquire the important 
skill of preparing their own food and help them become independent as
they grow up.

5. Baked Goodness.

Baking your favourite cookies or pizza could be a fun way to connect 
creatively as a family. 

Chocolate cookies are great fun to eat, but it could be greater fun to bake 
them and bake them together as a family. Adding the much-needed 
ingredients of love and care is even greater fun. 
It might seem a little overwhelming at the outset, but try involving 
everyone at some stage and weighing in their inputs. You will find the task as
smooth as that chocolate mousse you love and always wanted to try. 

If not the desserts, you can try some pizza, with ready-made bases available in 
the market. It could be a fun and easy way to have a fun family 
weekend time!

6. Digital Creativity.

Screen time and digital consumption are great matters of concern for 
many parents, with most children hooked on to their favourite 
programmes either on YouTube or other social media platforms. 
However, this can easily be transformed into a fun learning exercise by 
bringing in some purpose, such as creating, connecting, and learning 
together. 

One of the ways of doing this is by creating stop motion videos together. 
Stop motion animation is an animation that is captured one frame at a 
time, with physical objects that are moved between frames. When you 
play back the sequence of images rapidly, it creates the illusion of 
movement. It is quite a rage these days and requires story boarding, creative 
thinking, humour, and some patience. With each member of the family 
taking up a different aspect of the production, this gives you an opportunity 
to work together and learn at various levels while having lots of fun. 

7. Family game time

One of the best ways to connect creatively is by making and playing 
traditional games from around the world. It could be something as simple 
as ‘blindfold’, ‘treasure hunt’ or’ dumb charades’. Board and card games could also
be great fun together.

You can also explore family games from different parts of the world and 
see what can be incorporated into your home to bring in an element of 
mystery and curiosity. 

This will encourage creative thinking, exploration of different cultures and 
experimentation among the children as well as adults. 
As little as 30 minutes post dinner once or twice a week could go a long 
way in injecting that much need element of joy in the family.  

8. Pom Pom Fun.

If your children love pom-poms—there is a high likelihood that they do-you 
can use these little colourful bits to create a variety of objects 
together. 

One of the ways of doing it is by transforming pom-poms into cool ice 
cream cones, which the children can hang around the house for 
ornamentation. 

Cut the conical holders out of the egg cartons, paint them, and glue them 
to the pom-pom scoops using a hot glue gun. Then, glue a cherry-red bead on 
top and string them together. Check out with Mr. Google. You can make 
plenty of other things using these simple objects. 

9. Race Junkies.

For all the race junkies who like to have an adrenaline rush, here is 
how you can create some in-house Formula One Euphoria! All you need are 
some small pieces of cardboard and toilet paper rolls, even some 
aluminium foil or cling-wrap rolls would also do. You might also need some
paint to deck up your super cars. 

Now, use the cardboard roll as the body of your racer and deck it up with 
your favourite racing stripes, then cut the cardboard into circles for wheels, 
and attach them to the body of the vehicle using brads. 

Once the racers are decked up with the necessary details, head for the 
starting line and get ready for the In-House Grand Prix. 

10. Medley Memories.

Kids love to be creative if they get some company and some necessary 
nudging, but they also love to express themselves in the medium they are comfortable in 
and have some competence in or passion for. 

For their greater participation and involvement, encourage them to 
express their ideas in the medium they love. One way of doing this is by 
deciding on a theme and then encouraging each member of the family to 
come up with an artwork in the medium of their choice. It could be a piece of poetry, prose, painting, doodle, drawing, digital art, or any other 
medium of art. 

This will encourage individual members of the family to pursue their art of 
choice, creating multiple works on a single theme by working together while upholding their individual distinctions.