This Creative Table prompt invites you to use simple materials that you can easily gather on a walk and from basic supplies in your home.

Supplies

1. Paper
2. Marker or other drawing tool
3. Bowl of white glue
4. Paint brush
5. Fallen Leaves, gathered on a walk

Start with a Nature Walk

No trees were harmed for this project as we gathered leaves that had already fallen to the ground.

The Set Up

Clear the table

Draw a basic trunk structure on the paper. Don’t worry about perfection

Place the leaves, bowl of glue, and brush around the paper

Invite your child to create

More Ideas

Add markers or crayons and invite your child to add texture to the tree

Draw leaves or other ideas from their imagination

Draw a bird shape and offer feathers rather than leaves

I recently set up this mask-making activity up for my five-year old and loved seeing how she added details and personality to the animal mask template. This project falls under the Creative Table Project, a series of simple art and science prompts that encourage creative thinking skills and experimentation.

In a nutshell, you set up the materials and then invite your child to create.

How to Make an Animal Mask out of Paper

Supplies

See our full list of recommended supplies for more kid-friendly materials. Note: This list includes affiliate links

Card stock or other heavy paper

Child scissors: blunt, pointed, left-handed

Hole Punch

Elastic String or yarn/ribbon

Markers or Crayons: We use Crayola here

The Set-up

There are plenty of ways to set this up.

Older children: If your child is old enough to use a paper punch and cut with scissors, here’s your set-up:

1. Fold your paper in half.
2. Pre-draw the shape of half of an animal face the paper. Be sure the center of the face is along the folded edge.
3. Set the paper up on a table with markers and scissors.
4. Invite your child to cut the mask out of the paper and then design and create an animal.
5. Punch holes for the elastic, tie the elastic on, and wear!

Younger children: If you have a toddler or preschooler who isn’t ready for scissors yet, try this:

1. Fold your paper in half.
2. Pre-draw the shape of half of an animal face the paper. Be sure the center of the face is along the folded edge.
3. Cut the mask out of the paper
4. Place the mask and markers or crayons on the table and invite your child to design and create
5. Punch holes for the elastic, tie the elastic on, and wear!

For more easy art prompts and set-ups like this, visit The Creative Table Project.

And if you try this project or invent a creative prompt of your own, join me on Instagram with the hashtags: #tinkerlab and #creativetable

If you’ve been with TinkerLab for a bit of time, you may remember when I introduced the Creative Table Challenge a few years ago. Since then, I’ve posted a series of Creative Table prompt ideas as inspiration for setting up provocations and invitations to create at home and school.

Since then, I’ve received a lot of questions about these prompts, so I’m pulling a couple exciting projects together around this idea. I’m excited to share them with you soon!

Popular Creative Table Questions

I want to make the Creative Table resource more useful, so I’m gathering all of your big questions around it. First I’ll share some of the questions I get, and then I’d love to hear what questions YOU have!

Do you set these provocations up for your children every day?

Yes and no. I’ve gone through phases where I have set these up daily, and then other periods where I won’t set them up for a few days. It all depends on the rhythm of our family at the time. For example, when my children were both getting up VERY early, I would set up our Creative Table™ the night before so that they would have an engaging activity waiting for them when they awoke. I also find that summer is a good time for us to have daily prompts because there’s not a mad rush to get out the door early and we can ease into a morning of making. As my children get older, they still enjoy prompts, but they’re also driven by their own ideas and enjoy finding the materials they need in our self-serve maker zone.

Where do you get your supplies?

We order a lot of art supplies through Amazon, such as our liquid watercolors (affiliate – these are a must-have) and black kraft paper for covering tables. We also spend time at Michael’s, but it’s dangerous for me to bring my kids into the eye-candy bonanza of that store. 🙂 We gather a lot of found materials for projects such as foam printmaking and natural supplies on walks and hikes for projects such as this prompt with leaves and glue.

Where do you get your ideas?

I’ve been teaching art since 2000, and many of the ideas come from my own teaching practice. I’m also active online and find great inspiration ideas from favorite blogs and the #creativetable hashtag on Instagram. Other good Instagram hashtags are: #invitationtoplay #invitationstocreate and #30invitationstoplay

What questions do YOU have?

What burning questions do you have about invitations to create and provocations for the Creative Table? Maybe it’s about setting it up, making time for it, the age of your child or children, or the challenges you face with this type of project. Anything you have to share will be useful, and your name with be kept in confidentiality unless you give me permission to share it.

Thank you so much for taking time to fill this out!

If you’re looking for a simple way to set up creative provocations that encourage curiosity and imagination, you will love the Creative Table™ Project. These activities won’t take a lot of time to set up, and while your child creates you can step back while they enjoy the process of exploration.

WHAT IS THE CREATIVE TABLE PROJECT?

The Creative Table™ Project invites you to share an image of a creative invitation, prompt, provocation, or set-up. 

The creative table set-ups are simple: Clear a table, place the inspiring materials in an inviting arrangement, and invite a child to create.

There’s no right or wrong way about it. While we may have an idea about how the other person will use the materials, it’s ultimately up to the child to determine the outcome.

You can read more here for tips on how to set  up these creative table provocations.

Creative Table: Why it’s Important to Have a Clean Table

Tape and Paper Bags

Paint and Looping Lines

Tape and Paper

Doilies and Scissors

Leaves and Glue

Stickers and Frames

Glue and Sand

Doily and Watercolor Painting

Valentine’s Day Cards

Cardboard Heart Stamps

Blend Chalk Pastels

Glitter Pine Cones

If you’re new to all of this, find out how to set up a self-serve maker space for kids.

3 More Easy Creative Table Invitations

If you enjoyed this, check out 3 Easy Art Invitations that Encourage Creativity and Independent Thinking, an article I wrote for Modern Parents Messy Kids.

More Creative Table and Space Inspiration

Organize your Art Station

How to Set up an Art Cart

Art Supply Organization

 

With Fall finally hitting us here in California, we’re finding and collecting lots of natural objects on our walks around town. In addition to collecting these natural objects to grace our Fall table, we like to put our crafty caps on and make them sparkly…with lots of glitter.

Please don’t hold this against me if you’re in the “I can’t stand glitter” camp. I hope we can still be friends.

But first, a little background on the Creative Table Series

Almost two years ago, we started a series of posts on TinkerLab that introduce children to a limited number of inspiring materials as an invitation to create. We call this series Creative Table.

What is an Invitation to Create?

An invitation to create is a carefully designed prompt or provocation to make something. One person sets up an inviting selection of materials, and another person makes something from the materials. There’s no right or wrong way about it. While we may have an idea about how the other person will use the materials, it’s ultimately up to them to determine the outcome.

You can think of this as a sort of game with just a few rules. Adults can step in to offer suggestions or ideas, but the child should mostly be encouraged to find her own way.

Here’s how it works:

1. Clear the table of anything that won’t be used in the invitation.
2. Artfully arrange the materials to provoke ideas.
3. Limit the choice of materials to just a few items.
4. Provide clues about how to use the materials, but keep the project open-ended so that original ideas can flourish.

Creative Table with Natural Objects and Glitter

Here’s how to get started (and I promise you that this will be easy)…

Step 1: Take a walk and collect natural materials. We found all sorts of surprises, including many magnolia tree seed pods. And do you see those teeny tiny pine cones? Any guess as to which tree they’re from. Here’s your hint.

The Creative Table Set-up

ages 3 and up

If you’re using glitter, as we were, a tray or shallow box is critical for keeping the glitter mostly in one place. As you’ll see in the photos that follow, this is the starting point and then we added and changed this as we went along.

Supplies

• Tray. I found ours at Michael’s Craft Store, and found a similar one here on Amazon: Winco Fast Food Tray
• Shallow bowl filled with glue, mixed with watercolor or food coloring (optional)
• Paint brush
• Bowl of glitter
• Collection of treasures: sequins, buttons, googley eyes
• Natural materials
• Paper

The Creative Table Invitation

Once your space is set-up, invite your child (or children) to create. There are no firm rules here, but it often helps if you sit down and make alongside your child (you can see my husband, Scott’s, hands in the next photo). After a bit of tinkering, little R pulled out a few more bottles of glitter and the full bottle glue since she was running low.

In the end, we made one big, happy mess that didn’t travel all over the house. And we also earned ourselves festive objects to decorate our dinner table.

Questions to ask:

1. How can you cover this entire leaf/pinecone/seed pod?
2. Do you prefer the object in its natural state or covered in glue and glitter? Why?
3. What other material could we sprinkle on the glue?
4. Where should we put these once they’re dry?

Variations: 

1. Cover everything with the same color glitter for a unified look.
2. Attach string to the objects and turn these into ornaments.
3. Sprinkle colored salt instead of glitter. Recipe here.

More Simple Creative Table Projects

Creative Table Highlights via Instagram

Creative Table: Tape and Paper Bags

Creative Table: Paint and Looping Lines

Creative Table: Doilies and Scissors

Creative Table: Leaves and Glue

Creative Table: Stickers and Frames

Creative Table: Glue and Sand

Creative Table: Valentine’s Day Cards

Don’t Miss out! Join the TinkerLab Community

If you enjoyed this post, you can get more ideas for raising young inventors and filling your life with creativity by signing up for the weekly TinkerLab newsletter. It’s free and we often send exclusive content and opportunities that are only available to our subscribers.

In case you blinked and missed it, TinkerLab rounds up all the great stuff on the internets on keeping you and your critters creative and wraps it up for you in a tidy newsletter! (And throws in some secret giveaways for good measure!)  – Yuliya P., San Francisco, CA

Join our community and you’ll learn:

• How to simplify your life and make more room for creativity
• How to make hands-on making a part of your everyday life
• Easy, actionable ways to raise creative kids