Anyone else’s kids become frozen when given total freedom to create? It used to really bother me, but the more I thought about it the more I realized my expectations were a little too big. As adults, we almost never create without some boundaries and constraints. In fact, the most creative things I’ve ever seen were created with extreme boundaries; light bulbs that run on a weighted rope using inexpensive materials for people without access to electricity, artwork created with limited or odd materials like sand or pancake batter, and so many other things. The creativity is more profound because of the constraints. I’ve tried to apply this to our creative time at home. One way we’ve done this is with prompts.

This list is one that I came up with for chalk. Because chalk isn’t super exact and driveways are rough I opted to go with easy to draw items. Sometimes we just draw one item each and we have to come up with a scene that includes all the items. Sometimes we play chalk pictionary. A few times we’ve created a story. Sometimes we draw in a different space like on our fence or back patio. In the picture below we opted to create a mural of lots of small pictures using the prompts. I’ve included my list, but you can also customize it by clicking on a word and adding your own text.

Have fun creating!