Insights from Children’s Art Expert Bette Fetter: Top Blog Posts for January 2014
Bette Fetter
About Bette Fetter
Posts by Bette Fetter:
Family Fun: 11 January Activities for You and Your Kids
Little January tapped at my door today and said “put on your winter wraps and come outdoors to play.”- Winifred C. Marshall
January is a great month to start new and enjoy some winter fun! Enjoy these 11 activities I found that are fun for kids:
January Activities
- Drink Hot Chocolate: This delicious drink is easy to whip up, but make a ritual out of it and go slow to enjoy the process with you little ones. Adding whip cream to the top is my favorite part!
- Make a Puzzle: Dig out an old one or grab a new one from the store, this tactile activity is a great activity for group or single playtime.
- Examine Snowflakes: When it snows, chill some black construction paper in the freezer. Catch snowflakes on the paper and examine them with a magnifying glass!
Kids: A Global Conversation
All children are unique. And yet many of the challenges and concerns that parents share are very universal. In this video I share some thoughts on the way blogs and social media allow us to have critical parenting conversations on a global level.
Find out what kinds of things Sonia, a mother from India, is questioning about her son’s education.
Matt’s Success with Motion Graphics
Last night I saw my son working on a project for his Motion Graphics class. He is a college student now, studying for a degree in Digital Film and Video Production.
Tonight as I looked over his shoulder at his computer screen, I saw a vibrant red rectangle, with golden words moving in and out of position, all to the sound of Morgan Freeman’s voice.
The colorful words and movement were part of a Kinetic Type Project he was working on for class. The words he used were from the movie ‘Shawshank Redemption’.
Visual Learning: Motion Graphics with Matt
Last night, my son was in his room working on a project for a college class.
As I said good night to him, I got a peak at what he was working on and was very impressed. As I admired his work I thought about how my active son, that had resisted sitting still for hours of homework as a young child, had grown into a young man, willing to spend hours and hours on visual projects that engaged him.
Take a peak and be encouraged.
Sometimes You Just Have to Stop and Organize
This morning I woke up to my usual stream of new ideas and a long “to do’ list, excited to start my day. But as I moved through my morning routine I realized the residue of yesterday’s creative activity was driving me crazy. I paused, looked around and saw that there were literally piles of chaos all over the house. Some of it mine, some my husband and adult kids, some from an energetic grandchild. Now there are days when the momentum of creativity and busyness sweep us along and the piles don’t matter – but there are also days when we all need to stop and tidy up. This is especially important for visual tactile people, who tend to leave signs of their creative thought process all around them, much like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of breadcrumbs.
Organizing: It’s an After Christmas Plastic Sale!
I’m sure you’ve noticed that the stores we shopped at for holiday gifts have replaced the stocking and wrapping paper with rows and rows of plastic containers.
This seems to imply we have so much stuff – we need to buy more stuff – to put our stuff in. The good news is, with all this plastic for sale, its a great time to organize our kids ‘stuff’. When our kids were young, we spent some time before the holidays cleaning out the old to make room for the new. Together we decided what was old, broken and ready for the trash. We reorganized and tidied up the keepers and donated some old toys as seed for the new to come.
Holiday Gifts: My Husband is a Gamer!
Not Really. I’m not even sure what a gamer is. But I do know he found a few games on his IPad this holiday season that have captured his attention and and sparked some interesting conversations. 
First let me say, Bill and I own plenty of technology and don’t really understand or know how to use most of it. We have smart phones, IPads, IPods, laptops, and fancy things on our television but barely tap into the depth of their capability. I’m sure the computer in my car could get us to the moon – and back – but I’m still surprised when my car channels the voice of the person on the other end of my phone call. And just who is Siri?
Young Rembrandts Drawing: Dramatic Skill Building
When I first created Young Rembrandts, I was teaching a lot of preschool classes. 
We see huge academic and social benefits to getting young kids into art and drawing at an early age. But this story is about our elementary students. Elementary children are equally impacted by the arts. I have talked a lot about the relationship between art and learning styles but today I want to focus on artistic skill development.
A Great Sketchpad For All Your Ideas
Kids love to draw and can chew through a lot of paper when they get rolling. In this video, I share some thoughts on the best, inexpensive drawing paper and my favorite, very affordable sketchpad for kids.I hope it gives you some ideas.
