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Ideas for Younger Children

Encouraging their creativity

Young children have always enjoyed being creative and making things. Whether they’re presents for Mum, Dad or a special friend, or even something to go on the bedroom wall, the pleasure is worth the effort on your part.

Young children love to express themselves using pens, crayons or bits of old material, while older ones easily master computer design programmes and after only a few attempts turn out very professional looking results. Often the finished product is something you will keep forever.

We asked a professional Graphic Designer, who works in the Student Services Centre at Samuel Whitbread to put together some advice as to how you can help and encourage your child to be creative. Any relative or friend loves to get a homemade card or invitation from a child, especially on a birthday or Mother's Day, and kids get a real buzz out of making them and giving them.

Create your own Cards

Kids love making cards and invitations and it is an excellent chance to spend time with and entertain children with developing their abilities to express themselves through colours, composition and drawings with the aid of different media.

There are some amazing "Card Making for Children" or "Invitation Making for Children" websites if you search on the internet to help you find different ideas steered towards different children’s ages and abilities, with lots of creative and unusual ideas.

Basic card-making equipment: Non-Toxic Paints - Color Pencils - Color Markers or crayons - Writing utensils - Glue - Embellishments such as patterned paper, stickers, die cuts, and foam shapes - A4 sized drawing paper - Scissors - Rubber Stamps - small and medium sizes (easily handled by a child's hand) - Non-Toxic Dye Ink Stamp Pads.

Basic card-making instructions:

1. Fold A4 sized drawing paper into half to make a card blank.
2. Help the child to think of some creative ideas or inspire them with a subject to get them started, or use a seasonable theme.
3. Let the child experiment with colours.
4. Help them cut out the images.
5. Let them glue the embellishments onto the front of the blank card.
6. Help them write a note to whoever they want to send the card to. Help them write a message on the inside in their best handwriting. Help them with spelling as needed. If your child really struggles with writing and spelling or they are too young to do it on their own, you can write the message out for them on a separate piece of paper and your child can copy it from the paper onto their card.
7. Let them decorate the back of the card.
8. Put in the card or invitation into an envelope and address it.
9. Paste a postage stamp on to envelope and take the child to the Post Office/Post Box to post the card. Step by step, explain to them the whole process - from making a card to posting that same card. You could even post it to yourself and let the child find it on the mat from the Postman!

Have fun! And I believe you will give as much delight to you as to your child!

SUGGESTION: Try not to make negative remarks about a child's drawing or choice of colour. Encourage the child to express them self. If you do not understand their drawing or choice of colour used, just ask them to explain and they will readily tell you why. You'll be amazed by their explanation.

Ideas for Older Children

Children learn to use computers at a very young age, and by the time they leave our Lower Schools, most are computer literate and many can operate one better than some adults. If you have a computer at home, your children can use it to carry on and expand their design skills, and have a great deal of fun in the process.

Design on computers

Most computers run on operating systems manufactured by Microsoft, and all Microsoft systems contain a programme called "Paint". This is usually found in the accessories folder. Click on the Microsoft logo, the flag design usually in the bottom left hand corner of the desktop, click on "all programmes" and then on accessories. Open the paint programme and let your child explore what it can do. They can draw, colour, use shapes and add words to make, well, whatever they want.

Whatever they do can be saved by clicking on the file tab at the top of the screen and selecting the save option. You can then save the work to a specific folder or to the desktop. Microsoft have added a helpful feature to this programme so if your child accidently clicks to leave the programme without saving what they have made, it automatically stops them and asks if they want to save their work before they go. You can also print the picture by using the "print" option which is also found in the file tab.

While Paint is great for many children, more advanced users may need more of a challenge. Microsoft Word, the word processing programme which comes with Microsoft Office, has many good add-ons which can be used for designing things like invitations or flyers for school clubs. Office 2007, which most computer stores sell for about £90, will let you design some very impressive things using graphics contained in the programme or photographs you have taken and stored on the computer. It usually comes with three licenses so can be loaded on three separate computers.

Alternatively, there are many graphic design packages available. PC World sell one specifically designed for making greeting cards which currently retails for £9.77. There are lots of these programmes available and while the ones aimed at professional designers are phenomenally expensive, many are designed for children and cost a few pounds.

Printing your designs

If your child is making something you want to print off, like a special card, it is worth spending a few pounds on some good quality card or paper. A lot of computer printer paper won't give you a good result if you print colour pictures as it is designed and manufactured for the printed word and for the widely used black printer ink. Higher quality paper is denser and will hold coloured ink better, giving a better result. Just ask in a stationers and the staff will be able to recommend the right type of paper and card for you.

It's also a good idea to think about "tweaking" the printer settings to higher level to give a better quality print and the instructions that came with your printer should tell you how to do this. If you have lost the instructions, then try an internet search on the make and model of your printer as many instruction manuals are now available on-line.

Choosing the right software

Finally, one word of warning. If you are going to buy a design programme for your computer, then before you go write down all the details of your computer and printer and take them with you. When you find a programme that you think is suitable, check the case for a list usually marked "Operating Requirements". This will detail exactly what the programme needs to run and will list things like the amount of hard disc space required, the amount of Memory (RAM) needed, the requirements of the graphics card in your computer and most important, the type of operating system it needs to run. Some programmes designed for Windows Vista simply won't work properly on a computer using Windows XP or other older operating systems and the programme certainly won't work at all if it needs more RAM or processing speed than your computer has. If in doubt, the easy option is to hand the programme and the details of your computer to one of the staff and ask, "Will it work?"