Imagine Play Inspire

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Creative Play & Process Art Specialist helping children and adults strengthen their confidence, creativity & wellbeing

kids art classes & adult creativity workshops
🙋🏽‍♀ 20+ years of experience

What happens when you take three mornings, two tamariki and a wide range of open-ended creative materials...? 👀You get C...
30/07/2026

What happens when you take three mornings, two tamariki and a wide range of open-ended creative materials...? 👀

You get Creative Calm, our very small, cosy and playful school holiday programme.

With only two children, there’s no rushing from one activity to the next and no pressure to keep up with a bigger group.

There’s time to follow an idea, change direction, make a glorious mess, take a break, return to something later and get completely absorbed in the process.

Across the three mornings, we explore different materials, head outside nature-treasure-hunting, experiment freely and create following our curiosity.

Sometimes the children work side by side. And sometimes they get absorbed into their own little creative worlds for a while.

We play drawing games to connect, draw imperfectly with joy and warm up the creative juices each day.

Creative Calm is playful, creative and spacious... with plenty of individual support, loads of conversations and room for each child to be exactly who and where they are. ❤️

To find out about upcoming art camps, make sure to join the mailing list, as upcoming classes & workshops get announced withing there first.

29/07/2026

Try this fun and simple drawing game...

(Make sure to save this so you can easily find it again!)

✨ MIRROR DRAWING ✨

Fold an A3 piece of paper in half. Two of you will be doing a drawing together.

Decide who is going to have the first turn at leading... you’ll swap roles in the second round.

They draw a shape or line on their half, then the other person tries to mirror it on their side.

Keep adding new lines, shapes and details until your drawing feels complete (with the leader starting each time).

Then start a new picture, but swap who leads.

A lovely game for practicing observation, slowing down, accepting the ideas of others, and creating something together, without needing to decide what you’re drawing before you begin.

It's especially great for the child who gets frustrated when their drawing isn't "perfect", tends to micromanage the whole project, or finds it tricky when someone else has a different idea.

Because there’s no single right outcome and both people get to lead, it gently practices flexibility, turn-taking and letting go of a little control... all while creating something together.

Let me know if you're giving this one a go (pictures always welcome in my DM's 😁). And reach out if you have any questions!

Lastly, make sure to save this one to your drawing game folder ❤️

I loooove a beautiful piece of children’s art... But...I try to stay away from planning our lessons and workshops with t...
27/07/2026

I loooove a beautiful piece of children’s art...

But...

I try to stay away from planning our lessons and workshops with the goal in mind to make a "beautiful" something.

Because children are tuned in to watch and listen for what we value...

And if the biggest reaction comes when something looks impressive, tidy, clever, realistic or wall-worthy, they likely will start aiming for that in their future creative endeavours...

And then the making and creating becomes less about curiosity and more about getting it right or pleasing someone other than themselves.

But it's the messy, unstructured, and possibly slightly chaotic, process where so much magic happens...

The moment they try something unusual or when something doesn’t work.
The moment they don’t give up, or the moment they make a decision that only makes sense to them.
The moment they proudly explain that the canvas covered entirely in black (😬😬😬) is actually a portal for space cats...

These things matter so much more than whether something looks beautiful.

Also, who even gets to define "beauty" in this context? Probably a topic for another post... 😅

Share this to help make imperfect making & creating the norm ❤️

22/07/2026

Interrupting your scroll to bring you some slow moments from our parent-child workshop earlier this month...

I remember when I first had the idea to run a workshop where parents are equally participating, not just watching from the sidelines.. I was so excited and couldn't wait to make it happen!

Fast forward half a year and we've had three of those!

Thanks Volcanoview Taranaki for being a gem of a venue and space, always bringing the bestest and most welcoming vibes!

Here's what people have said about this workshop:

"A comfortable space with permission to be creative. So nice to have one-on-one with my daughter!"

"I loved the whole thing!!"

"So cool to do it with them, instead of drop off or sit and watch!"

Who's keen for the next one??

21/07/2026

Three mornings of nature exploration, play, making, slowing down, imagining and connecting. Oh my ❤️

Copying gets a bit of a bad reputation...Of course, we definitely don’t want children to feel like they have to make the...
20/07/2026

Copying gets a bit of a bad reputation...

Of course, we definitely don’t want children to feel like they have to make the same thing as everyone else. That’s not what this is about at all.

It's more that copying itself isn’t automatically a problem...

Because more often than not it’s how children begin learning new skills.

They see an idea, borrow it, test it, stretch it, add something strange to it, and eventually... it becomes theirs.

Which, on that note, is also how a lot of adult creativity works. We just call it "being inspired" because it sounds more sophisticated than "I saw a thing and wanted to do that too" 🙊

The important part for creativity is moving past the copy.

E.g. by leaving enough room for children to add, change, question, remix and make the idea their own. And for us to play and experiment with different ways of doing what inspired us in the first place. Oh the joys and surprises that follow...! ✨

Share this with your creative community so everyone's on the same page 😁

16/07/2026

If every activity tells children exactly what to do, when do they get the chance to discover what they might do?

This is one of the reasons I'm so passionate about process art.

When children are free to explore materials, test ideas, make mistakes, change direction, and follow their curiosity, they're doing so much more than "making art".

They're learning to think for themselves.

And in a world full of instructions, I think that's pretty important. ❤️

What opportunities for open-ended exploration have your children enjoyed lately?

I know the "I’m bored" voice can do something very specific to a parent’s nervous system... 😅It can make us feel like we...
15/07/2026

I know the "I’m bored" voice can do something very specific to a parent’s nervous system... 😅

It can make us feel like we need to fix it immediately. Suggest something. Give them something. Find an activity etc.

But... boredom, more often than not, isn't a problem we need to solve for our kids.

Because it’s the uncomfortable yet essential little gap before children start inventing, tinkering, building, wondering... or suddenly turning a cardboard box into a beehive (yup, it's happened 😁).

The tricky bit is that we often don’t wait long enough.

We step in just before the magic begins.

See reading this as your gentle permission slip to not put your entertainment hat on every time boredom enters the room.

A bit of boredom might be just what's needed... ❤️

Save this to remember, share it to remind others 😉

👀Congrats, you've just experienced a dash of play within your day. 😁See how fun it is to follow your curiosity? Of cours...
14/07/2026

👀

Congrats, you've just experienced a dash of play within your day. 😁

See how fun it is to follow your curiosity?

Of course the caption is (mostly) irrelevant, it's the journey that got you here that contains all the important stuff: Play, discovery, surprise, and that feeling of anticipation....

Thanks for playing, keep it up hehe 🙃✨

13/07/2026

What's actually happening here... 👇

✨ Hand strength
✨ Fine motor development
✨ Cause and effect
✨ Colour exploration
✨ Sensory processing
✨ Concentration
✨ Decision making
✨ Curiosity

That squeeze of the bottle? That's strengthening the small muscles needed later for drawing, painting, cutting, and writing.

That moment of watching the dye spread through the shaving foam? That's experimentation. Predicting outcomes, developing a theory, observing what happens.

And perhaps most importantly...

It's joyful!

As adults, we can be quick to ask: "What are they making?"

But often the richest learning happens when children aren't making anything at all. When, instead, they're exploring, testing theories and discovering what happens when they interact with the world around them.

Save this as a reminder that play doesn't need to look "educational" to be full of learning.

And if you work with young children, share this with someone who still thinks play is "just playing" 🙃

Address

Oakura
4314

Telephone

+64278370498

Website

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