Art Space for Kids

What a fun, busy weekend!

I hope you all got to celebrate father's day with any special dads in your life.

Around here, we are still adjusting to having the kids home for 4-day weekends over the summer.  I love getting to spend more time with the girls, but it means more planning and more working getting ahead of the mess!

In addition to the seasonal closet turn over where we change over sizes as they grow, we seem to need a seasonal toy and activity re-organization as their skills and interests change.  One thing my girls are always busy with is art projects, and a while back we moved a little Ikea table from the basement into the kitchen.  The idea was to have a dedicated space for art so the dining room table is not constantly covered with in-progress projects.  Only problem?  It was getting completely buried, and no could ever find the scissors or tape.  I wish I had a "before" picture, but honestly I wasn't thinking about a blog post when I took this on.  Imagine the table equivalent of this.

We cleared the table, sorted finished work, and then set about organizing.  I dug up some leftover bins from organizing our closet drawers and corralled crayons, markers, pens, and pencils into separate small and shallow bins.  A larger bin holds the rest of the basics: scissors, glue, ruler, and tape.  Clio added a yogurt container full of popsicle sticks.  Add a stack of paper in a manila folder, and voila.

Noe the everyday stuff is at their fingertips.  Activity books and specialized projects, like stamping kits, beading, origami, play dough, and the like are still in the big armoire in the dining room.

If you have kids, do you find yourself re-organizing with their needs?  Do you have dedicated space for creating?