Children’s Mental Health Week: Creating together

Creating Together: Simple Activities for Children’s Mental Health Week

Somedays life can feel a bit overwhelming and processing our emotions and feelings becomes a bit hard through words or a conversation. In those times it’s always worth considering engaging in some creative activities that can help you and your loved ones relax, rewind, and bond together. Here are some creative and artistic activities that you can do with your parents or friends whenever you feel like it.

Emotional Colour Painting 

You’ll need: paper or canvas, watercolours/acrylics, a couple of brushes and water cups. 

To start you can choose colours that match how you are feeling today and paint or let your emotions guide your hands on the canvas. Make sure that you’re not trying to make it perfect or something that looks amazing or makes 100% sense, it’s just something that resonates with you at the moment. If you’re doing this with family or friends you can either paint separately on different surfaces or make something unique together. Once you’re finished, you can also talk a bit about the colours you chose, how you feel or any other thoughts that come to your mind while painting.

One Page Comic Strip 

You’ll need a couple of sheets of paper, some pencils or markers. 

Fold the pieces of paper into 4-6 small squares and fill each box with something funny or silly about how your day went or anything else you can imagine. Once you’re finished, take turns to act or read out your comic and have some fun!

Memory Collage 

You’ll need a phone/camera, a notebook or a photobook, some old magazines, a glue stick, scissors and a cardboard

Through the day if you feel like there’s a special or peculiar moment with friends or family that you’d like to take a picture of, capture that and then get some print outs or make a video like our star “Pizza Ghost” on our connecting creatively section and create a collage either on your phone or on a piece of cardboard with some print outs. If you have tons of amazing memories you’d like to capture, you can collect them and make a photo book from an old notebook or an old magazine. 

Kitchen Percussion Music Jam 

You’ll need some pots and pans, spoons, containers, coffee beans/rice/beans and anything else you can find in the kitchen.

There’s no time or way to do this, if you’re waiting for the pasta to boil next to your parents and have some time to spare, this is something you might enjoy. Experiment with all the kitchen appliances, unleash your inner Mozart and have some fun (just avoid doing so after bed time or late hours). 

Freeze Dance & Music 

You’ll need a music playlist, a phone/tv and a speaker

Without looking at the screen, dance freely until the music stops or put a timer on your phone and when the time’s up freeze for 10 seconds or as long as you can, and then do it again. You can make it more interesting by randomly setting short 1-2 minute alarms on your phone so that you can’t when the music stops in your head. The first person to break the freeze will have to sing a song or invent a new silly dance move. 

Arts & Feelings Journal 

You’ll need some markers, a notebook, a pen, some stickers, glitter and some crayons. 

This is a bit like the emotional colour painting activity, but in this you can write your feelings in the form of a journal entry, a poem, or a little story and add some colour, stickers and glitter to it. If you’re doing this with your parents, then you can help each other out by writing a poem together or just decorating one page of your shared journal together. 

The Floor is Lava 

You’ll need a room or a hallway and a phone or timer. 

This is one of my favorite games. For this game you’ll need some imagination and some acrobatics skills to navigate through the dangerous floor. Depending on how you’re feeling today, you can imagine the floor to be a river of lava, or a thorny forest or just a plain old puddly. Try to avoid touching the floor and cross from one side to the other as quickly as you can. If you are doing this with a parent then you can time this and see who gets to the other side faster.

Arts & Craft Cooking Session 

You’ll need bread, fruits, vegetables, spreads, sprinkles, seasonings. 

Food doesn’t always have to be made the same old fashioned way. Depending on your mood or imagination you can always make a tiny army with your peas, carrots, and potatoes, or a smiley face or some designs on your toast with some spreads or ketchup, sometimes, even the seasonings can add a few other special features to your masterpiece. It’s a fun way to spend some time in the kitchen or dining room together and experiment with food. 

Final Thoughts

Art can be used as a form of expression, but also a way of communicating and connecting with your parents or children and understanding how they see things. It can help us see the value in the simple things in life and how they have the power to create something special and spark something within us. I really hope that some or any of these activities can help you bond with your child and have lots of fun!

Written by Roy Ghoshal