Beaded Garden Art - Innovation Kids Lab

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Be creative all year long with The Artful Year.

We had the opportunity to review the book, The Artful Year, Celebrating The Seasons and Holidays with Crafts and Recipes by Jean Van’t Hul from The Artful Parent.

We love that Jean also has a passion for promoting creative thinking and fostering a love of making and creating with kids. Be sure to check out Jean’s website The Artful Parent for more creative activities for kids.

The book, The Artful Year contains over 175 creative activities divided by seasons. The activities range from arts and crafts to nature inspired activities and I love that recipes were included. I can’t wait to try some of the pumpkin recipes myself.

It is a great inspiring book with a wide variety of activities for all ages (Quick Side Note: My 85 year old Grandmother is in town visiting and I caught her looking through the book. She said she was inspired by the activities too. She is where I get my craftiness)!

I let Lil B (5) and M-Woww (3) look through the book. There are many activities they want to try but we all agreed on starting with the beaded garden ornaments.

Our garden was in need of some new decor and I knew this activity would help work on their fine motor skills (bonus benefit).

Beaded Garden Art We used an assorted collection of beads. This is a great activity to use up odds and ends of different beads left over from other projects.

Beaded Garden Art We talked about creating patterns with our beads but for the most part my two artists wanted to pick out their favorite beads to string. I let them choose how they wished to arrange the beads leaving the designing open-ended.

Beaded Garden Art

Beaded Garden Art We followed the tutorial in the book except instead of using the recommended wooden dowel stick we wrapped our beads around real sticks. I love the contrast of the plastic colorful beads against the real stick.

Beaded Garden Art From a distance the beads look like they are floating in the garden as the stick blends in with surrounding parts of nature. Plus, Lil B and M-Woww had fun hunting around the yard for sticks to use.