Art Therapy Projects & Activities for Children with ADHD

Fine art therapy is a form of alternative treatment based on the premise that art helps express emotions – anxiety, sadness, or anger – that are sometimes difficult to put into words. Fine art therapy helps some children (and adults) who communicate their thoughts more easily though visual images and artistry – and who are more comfy with pictures than they are with words.

"As a parent, you likely chop-chop recognize struggles in how your child approaches schoolwork. As an art therapist, I will find the same attending difficulties in how a child approaches an art job," says Stacey Nelson, LCPC, LCPAT, ATR-BC. "The process of making art can reveal problems with focus, motor command, retention, managing emotions, arrangement, sequencing and decision making. It also has the potential to improve emotional well-being, develop trouble solving skills, and raise social interaction."

During a typical fine art therapy session, a child works on structured projects — a process that helps him piece of work through feelings, resolve conflicts, and develop important skills. After school and during the summer, when routines and schedules permit for more flexibility, parents can carve out time to use the techniques of fine art therapy to build skills and encourage a kid to express emotions.

Through fine art therapy, children with ADHD tin build mental flexibility, problem-solving skills, and communication practice equally they explain what they made to a parent or friend. Fine art also creates natural moments for positive social interactions, like sharing materials, sharing space, making compliments, or fifty-fifty making suggestions. Here are some ideas for making information technology work for your family this summer.

Setting the Stage to Make Art

Every creative surround begins with a positive and motivating attitude. The benefits of art therapy emerge from the process of making art, not the visual entreatment of the final production, so be certain to focus on your child's effort rather than the effect.

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Create a workspace with few visual distractions. Put away all electronics. Brand sure your art supplies are in expert condition, washable, and easy to access.

Limit the choices to two or 3 for each material or craft. Effort creating a visual boundary effectually the workspace by marking off the perimeter with bluish painter'southward record to help focus within the box.

Warm-Up Activities

A unproblematic, relaxing task can help a child with ADHD release backlog energy and enter a artistic state of mind.

ane. Mandalas

A mandala is a circle with a blueprint inside it that represents the universe in Hindu and Buddhist symbolism. Drawing mandalas tin help to create calm free energy and promote focus. Some art therapists begin their sessions by asking a child to trace a round, flat object – like a plate – on a blank piece of paper, and so fill it with color and designs.

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A child tin can describe unproblematic scribbles, a face, images of the moon, or whatever sparks her creativity.

2. Scribbles

Give a child a piece of newspaper and a marker. Ask him to scribble all over one side of the paper with his dominant hands. Then, flip the paper over, and scribble on the other side using the non-dominant hand.

3. Worries

Enquire the kid to write down a worry he wants to put aside while making art, so tell him to tear up the paper using both hands.

"Every bit a parent, you might also ask your child what a detail feeling or experience looks similar," says Stacey Nelson. "They may describe it realistically or abstractly, but it can be a starting off betoken of them telling y'all their point of view."

Sample Art Projects

The all-time art projects contain a series of simple steps, and incorporate movements like pounding dirt or walking across the room to go another material. When working with a younger kid, write downward the steps and bank check off each i as your complete it. With older children, reflect on the steps afterwards a project is completed by asking how they made it.

i. Summer Snowman

Materials: Clay, Small Sticks, Paint or markers

1. Roll out three assurance of clay
2. Stack the balls
3. Add together details like a face, buttons, and arms

2. Ripped Newspaper Collage

Materials: Newspaper, cartoon tools, record or mucilage

1. Think of something that makes y'all experience angry, and draw information technology quickly
2. Rip upwardly the paper
3. Use some of the pieces to make a collage or some other piece of art that makes you experience happy

iii. Create Your Own Coloring Canvass

Materials: Newspaper, and drawing tools

1. With a black or dark colored marker, close your eyes and draw a scribble
2. Open up your optics
3. Colour in each section of the scribble with a different color

4. Circle Weaving

The motion of weaving can be calming. This can also create a soft fidget for children who benefit from keeping their easily busy.

Materials: Sturdy paper (i.e., cardstock paper-thin), yarn, scissors, pencil, beads (optional), compass, ruler, sewing needle (optional)

Make the Circle Loom

1. Draw a circle on paper
2. Cut out circle
3. Make pencil marks an even distance autonomously at the perimeter of the circumvolve
4. Cut a notch at each pencil marker

Thread the Loom

5. (Back) Record yarn to the dorsum of the loom and insert it through any notch
6. (Front) Wrap the yarn over to the front and insert through the contrary notch
7. (Back) Proceed wrapping the yarn across the dorsum, and insert the yarn through the notch next to the notch used in Step five
8. (Front end) Wrap the yarn over to the front and insert it through the opposite notch (which is next to the notch used in Step 6
9. Continue wrapping the yarn over the front and back of the loom until you get to the last notch
10. Bring the yarn to the back of the loom, cutting and tape information technology to the back

Outset the Weaving

11. If using a sewing needle, thread another piece of yarn. If not, wrap 2 inches of the yarn'due south tail with tape
12. Cut off a piece of yarn to weave (about an arm's length)
13. In the eye of the loom, tie a double knot of the threaded yarn, to a line of yarn of the loom (called the warp)
14. Weave over and under each line of the warp, making your fashion effectually the circle. After a few rows, a pattern will announced

Add together Yarn or Change Color

15. Double knot the cease of the old yarn to the beginning of the new yarn
16. Go along adding more yarn of different colors every bit y'all wish

Remove Weave from the Loom

17. Cut the lines of yarn at the back of the loom. Be sure to cut shut to the center
18. Tie two adjacent pieces of yarn; double know them
19. Keep knotting 2 side by side pieces of yarns until y'all have knotted all the loose ends

Decorate

20. Cord beads to the loose pieces of yarn
21. Encourage children to cull beads that symbolize at-home. Or, encourage children to assign a gratitude to each bead

Circle weaving (2016).  Retrieved from http://world wide web.instructables.com/id/Circle-Weaving/?ALLSTEPS.

For More than Ideas

Read the Art Therapy Sourcebook (#CommissionsEarned), past Cathy Malchiodi.

Visit the ADDitude Pinterest Lath for inspiration and ideas, and please add your own recommendations.

Look up easy clay or dough recipes that children can shape, and then bake. Notice a wooden projection to build, or purchase a pack of balsa wood to gum together in an interesting way. Get some big paper, and try the Jackson Pollack style of flicking pigment. If a child has a favorite character, like Super Mario, enquire him to draw Mario on an adventure, or paint Mario expressing a feeling he has. Or, have him build a home for Mario to relax in. Showtime from the child's natural interests, and so contain other things.

Getting Kids to Talk Nigh Their Fine art

"Making art as a family provides natural opportunities for positive social interactions like sharing materials, sharing space, making compliments or even making suggestions if someone needs some aid with trouble solving," says Stacey Nelson. "Sometimes information technology's easier to talk nigh our artwork than ourselves."

To get children to open most their creations, starting time with these questions and comments:

• Tell me about your picture.
• Is in that location a story that goes along with your drawing?
• What feeling would you put with your film?
• Is there a championship?
• How did you make this?
• Where did your ideas come from?
• What was the virtually challenging part of making this?

"For instance, if children draw and tell yous about an experience of being angry at school, y'all tin can inquire what the worst part was for them. Y'all can ask them what helped them become through it," suggests Stacey Nelson. "Then, highlight some skills or some resiliency that they might not accept noticed in themselves. It can provide an opportunity for y'all to provide some support."

It'south much more important to comment on positive behavior than it is to discuss how the art looks. For example, say, "I really similar how you…"

• …followed the steps carefully.
• …focused for a long fourth dimension.
• …kept working fifty-fifty when you were frustrated.

The nigh important matter is to take fun. It doesn't matter if a projection doesn't work out perfectly the starting time fourth dimension – information technology's an opportunity to effort once more tomorrow. As Stacey Nelson reminds parents, "Think, information technology's simply newspaper and fine art materials are meant to be used upwardly and enjoyed."

[Read This Next: The Art of Happiness — and Self-Esteem]

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