How Dry Erase Walls Foster Creativity

How can Dry Erase Walls Help to Foster Creativity?

High-quality dry erase painted walls foster creative thinking and free expression among students in many ways. Creativity is an essential quality for children to gain at an early age, as it aids in developing their cognitive and emotional intelligence, helps them innovate and develop better problem-solving skills, and even allows them to feel more confident in expressing their ideas, opinions, and decisions throughout life. The following are some fun classroom exercises that can inspire your students to tap into their creative potential and learn new subject matter in the process.

The “Wild Wednesday” Assignment Expands Children’s Empathy and Worldview

Every “Wild Wednesday” during the school year, write a thought-provoking question for your students on the classroom’s dry erase wall. The question needs to be one that prompts the students to use their imaginations and visualizing skills while searching for an answer, and they’ll need to be prepared to share it with others as well. For instance, you can ask, “If you could be an animal, what animal would you choose to be and why? What would you say to humans if you could talk?” Another question might be, “If you could have a superpower, what power would you choose? How would you use it to help the earth become a better place to live?”

Such questions will prompt the children to imagine different qualities, behaviors, and lifestyles that go beyond their own day-to-day lives, thus broadening their thinking, strengthening their ability to show empathy for animals and other humans, and enhancing their creativity.

The Synonym Game Builds Vocabulary and Improves Writing Skills

Write a word in the center of the classroom dry erase wall, then ask your pupils to come up with as many alternative words with the same meaning that they can think of while being as creative as possible and trying to push themselves to think beyond the most obvious choices. Next, pair up the children, ask them to write the words they came up with on the dry erase wall, and have them work together to write sentences that contain the words. One student in each pair can write half of a sentence, and the other one can write the other half as they discuss word choice and grammar.

This exercise will help to expand the children’s vocabulary and sentence-writing skills by prompting them to construct grammatically correct sentences as a team. It will also build their confidence about making suggestions and give you a chance to discuss vocabulary words that the class has been studying.

The Shape Game Fosters Visualization and Creative Thinking Abilities

The shape game is a fun and exciting recreational activity that children really enjoy as a pastime, but it can also serve as a valuable teaching and learning tool in the elementary or middle school classroom. Such imaginative drawing games help children learn how to experiment and play, to express their ideas visually, and to develop their creative thinking skills by visualizing an image in their minds and realizing it in physical form on the classroom dry erase painted wall.

Starting by Drawing Shapes

For this activity, divide the students into groups of two, then ask them to take turns drawing a line or shape on the wall, with each line or shape adding to the previous ones in order to construct a new image. For instance, a circle drawn by one student can become an orange, a peach, or an apple if another student draws a short curved line that looks like a stem on top of the circle. Encourage the class to do this exercise in silence, so they don’t offer suggestions to one another about what to draw next. Instead, ask them to be creative and use their imaginations to decide on what they want to draw each time it’s their turn.

Adding Speech Bubbles and Backgrounds

After a few minutes of drawing, ask the children to draw speech bubbles near their images and have them write in the bubbles what their image is saying or what sounds it’s making. You could also ask the students to draw an environment around their images and write a description of the image or a poem or story about it. As they did with the drawing part of the exercise, the students should write their description, poem, or story while taking turns, adding one sentence after another until they’re finished writing. This exercise helps promote the skill of creative visualization through its drawing component and verbal creativity through its writing component.

Drawing a Shape and Having Students Write About it

A variation on this game would be for you to draw a random shape in the center of the dry erase wall then ask your students to think about what the shape looks like. In this case, they could come up with any number of possibilities, but they will need to choose one idea and write about the characteristics of the shape based on that idea in as much detail as possible. Like the original shape game, this exercise enhances both visual and verbal creativity by having both a drawing and a writing component.

A Short Story Exercise that Fosters Creative Writing Skills

Helping students become good writers can’t be achieved just by having them read other people’s writings then teaching them the essential elements of the writing process. They need to be able to put these elements into practice in order to enhance their compositional skills and style and discover their weaknesses and areas where they might need improvement. With this idea in mind, the following exercise can help young writers cultivate their imaginations and learn about how skilled creative writers work.

Use the Basic Story Elements to Prompt Students for Ideas

Divide the classroom’s dry erase wall into five equal-sized sections using a ruler or yardstick and a dry erase marker with dark-colored ink. The sections should each contain a basic story element that the children can use for writing their own short stories, thus flexing their creative muscles and letting their imaginations run wild. Within the sections, write the following headers representing the basic short story elements: characters, setting, time, problem, and events. Then ask the students to come up with original ideas about the elements as you write them down under the category headers.

Have Students Write Stories Based on the Ideas They’ve Chosen

Allow the students enough time to deliberate until they run out of ideas. When the class has generated all the ideas they can think of, ask them to choose from among the items on the wall, then have them write short stories based on the items they’ve selected. Prompts for the stories should include the following:

1. A dream about which they remember a significant number of vivid images and details

2. A clear memory of an event that they experienced in the recent or distant past

3. A favorite song or music video of which they remember the lyrics and/or images.

Inform the students that when they write their stories, they can change the details of the dream, memory, favorite song, or music video to correspond with the story elements they chose from the items presented in class. In this way, their creative thinking skills will be stimulated through the process of coming up with variations on the original characters, setting, time, problem, and events of their chosen dream, past life event, song, or music video.

Allow Students to Finish Stories for Homework

If the students don’t have enough time to finish their stories during the regular class period, they can do so as a homework assignment. This will allow the children to edit their short stories and refine the grammar, sentence structure, style, and content until they’re satisfied with the quality of their finished products.

Creative writing exercises such as this one are great for developing and loosening up students’ “writing muscles,” for enhancing specific writing skills, and for just having fun as they learn to become competent and confident creative writers.

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WHAT IS A WHITEBOARD WALL?

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WHY PAINT COMPANIES NEED TO BE ENVIRONMENTALLY MINDFUL

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PREMIUM DRY ERASE PAINT IDEAS FOR THE BEDROOM

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Premium Dry Erase Paint Ideas for the Bedroom

Premium Dry Erase Paint Ideas for the Bedroom

The bedroom is an ideal space to apply top-quality dry erase paint on one or more of the walls, the main door, the closet doors, and other smooth flat surfaces in the room. Your bedroom is a place where you tend to feel at ease, so it’s a great place to casually jot down thoughtful notes for family members, create plans for new remodeling projects, brainstorm ideas for work-related activities, and more. Some of the areas where you can apply dry erase paint in the bedroom are presented below, along with both practical and fun ways to use the finished dry erase surfaces after they’re installed.

PAINT THE DOOR TO DISPLAY IMPROMPTU ART AND RECORD CREATIVE IDEAS

Create Art and Write Down Flashes of Insight on Your Dry Erase Door

On the inside of your bedroom door, you could coat the entire surface to create a convenient place to display your impromptu artwork, spontaneous literary outbursts, ideas for work projects, and other images or ideas that strike you just as you get out of bed in the morning. The periods just before going to sleep and just after waking up are two times that are most conducive to sudden flashes of inspiration and intuition. During these occasions, the brain is in a condition called “hypnagogia,” a semi-conscious state that’s susceptible to an influx of thoughts and images from the subconscious mind.

These interludes are known to be times when highly imaginative people such as Thomas Edison and Edgar Allan Poe had some of their greatest creative breakthroughs. In fact, some of the world’s brightest minds have used hypnagogia to tap into their inner creativity. For example, Edison, Poe, and the Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali purposely tried to bring on the hypnagogic state to stimulate their creative abilities. These inspired individuals took naps while holding a steel ball in their hands so they would wake up from the noise when the ball hit the floor. Then they would use the ideas they got during the state of semi-wakefulness to make new inventions, write poetry, or create paintings.

You can also take advantage of this period of enhanced creativity if you apply premium dry erase paint to the inside of your bedroom door and write down or draw your flashes of inspiration upon waking from sleep. Dry erase surfaces are much better for this purpose than the note pads that many people use to jot down their sudden flashes of insight after waking up. The walls offer many times more space to record early morning revelations. So, they’re much more conducive to letting the imagination flow freely for as long as ideas come up. After writing and drawing freely on your door, you can take pictures of what you came up with for further reference at the office or later at home.

Post Reminders on the Door about Tasks and Appointments

You might also use your dry erase painted bedroom door to remind yourself of tasks you need to complete or appointments you need to go to after you start your day. Having this information in large lettering on the door right in front of you as you leave your bedroom will help to impress it on your mind. In this way, you won’t forget your duties as easily as you would if they were written on your cell phone’s memo pad or on a paper notepad. You can also take a picture of the door’s contents to refer to later on.

Paint Your Closet Doors and Dresser Drawers to Help Become More Organized

To help in organizing your wardrobe and reminding yourself of where specific clothes, shoes, jewelry, and accessories are located, you can apply premium dry erase paint to your closet doors and dresser drawers. There you can list the contents and also write down specific outfits, shoes, and pieces of jewelry that you want to wear on any given day. Another use for these surfaces would be to list clothes, shoes, and accessories that you plan to have cleaned or repaired, to give to family members, or to donate to charity.

PAINT THE WALLS TO ENHANCE BOTH YOUR WORK AND RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES

Another perfect place to install premium dry erase paint in the bedroom is on one or more of the walls. Doing so would be especially useful if you plan to convert a part of the room into a home office. In this case, you may use premium dry erase paint to demarcate the office space from the surrounding area then use the finished dry erase wall for your daily work functions. These could include doing presentations at virtual meetings, brainstorming ideas individually or with colleagues at the virtual meetings, taking notes during phone calls, making to-do lists about important work duties, and a host of other tasks.

For recreational purposes, you could also make use of your dry erase wall for spontaneous doodling and drawing. These activities have been found to have a relaxing effect on the mind and to improve cognitive functioning and focus when doing tasks that require concentration. In fact, the very act of writing by hand stimulates the brain in people of all ages as well and enhances brain development in children and adolescents.

Compared to doodling on notepaper, doodling on a dry erase wall has the advantage of access to a much larger space to work on and an easily erased surface that allows you to spend an indefinite time on the activity without wasting paper. Doodling during breaks can also help to cheer up the atmosphere of your home office by giving you a carefree alternative to the serious, focused writing and computations you do in your remote work.

A Calendar Wall Can Further Enhance Your Organizing Skills

You may also coat your bedroom wall with dry erase paint to create a large calendar for maintaining schedules and keeping track of appointments, meetings, holidays, and the like. You can either draw your calendar with dry erase markers and a ruler or yardstick, or opt for a more permanent calendar by installing electrical tape, colored masking tape, or washi tape over your already drawn calendar template.

Washi tape is a high-quality type of masking tape made of Japanese rice paper, so it’s different from the regular masking tape you might buy at your local hardware store. Washi tape is both beautiful and functional. It can be torn, stuck onto surfaces, repositioned, and written on, and its low-tack adhesive makes it exceptionally easy to use and reuse. The tape comes in a wide variety of colors, patterns, and widths, so you can use it to make a highly creative and beautiful calendar that will be fun to look at and use.

Create a Movie Wall to List Must-see Movies

You can use the dry erase wall in your bedroom to write down titles of movies that you would like to see, then delete entries you watch and easily add more must-see films. According to a recent survey, the majority of people in the US say home is their favorite moving-watching location. So, if you’re like many others, you’ll want to keep up with the latest films available on streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu, which provide you with a means of watching films on the go. And a convenient way to keep track of new releases is to list them on your dry erase wall.

Write Inspirational Messages on Your Wall

Periodically write down inspirational quotes on your dry erase wall to cheer up the atmosphere and provide yourself with motivation to carry out your daily tasks. Motivational quotes can provide you with quick and timely bits of wisdom to help you get your focus back on the task at hand and offer the encouragement needed for the entire day or a specific occasion.

The post Premium Dry Erase Paint Ideas for the Bedroom appeared first on ReMARKable Whiteboard Paint.

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How to Improve the Readability of Text on Your Dry Erase Painted Wall

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How to Improve the Readability of Text on Your Dry Erase Painted Wall

How to Improve the Readability of Text on Your Dry Erase Painted Wall

Although premium dry erase painted walls are designed to always allow for highly readable writing due to their large size and bright smooth surface, it’s essential to follow certain practices and maintain certain conditions in the surroundings to ensure that your wall functions at its best and the content on the surface can be easily read. The fact of the matter is that not everyone has the ability to produce beautiful handwriting, and even those who do may struggle to transfer this skill to writing on a dry erase painted wall.

Writing on a dry erase wall just isn’t the same kind of activity as writing on a piece of paper. For one thing, you often can’t see a large enough area of the writing surface to keep your words evenly spaced and arranged in a straight line, and if you’re left-handed, the process becomes a question of exactly what to do with your hand.

In this article, we’ll address some of the common issues related to readability when writing on dry erase painted walls, along with steps you can take to remedy these problems.

Use Print Instead of Cursive Handwriting on Your Dry Erase Wall

Cursive handwriting is “joined-up” writing in which the letters are linked together, making it faster to execute because you need to lift your pen or marker from the surface less often while writing. During the 18th and 19th centuries in Great Britain and the United States, before the typewriter, cursive was the preferred style of writing for authors, poets, and professionals such as physicians and lawyers.

Nowadays, however, print handwriting also referred to as printing or block lettering, is more prevalent. In printing, the pen or marker is lifted from the surface after each letter is written. This style is considered clearer and easier to read than cursive writing and is often requested in filling out forms. Print handwriting is also best to use on your dry erase painted wall, as it allows viewers to more easily perceive what you’re writing without having to continually ask questions about the content.

On your dry erase wall, it’s a good idea to stick with hand printing of clearly defined and separated letters and pay attention to making your letters more distinct and easily readable than you would if you were printing on paper. The further away your audience is from your dry erase wall, the smaller the spaces between your letters will appear, so what might seem oddly spread out writing as you stand near the wall will look totally normal to people a few feet away.

Make Sure the Text is Big Enough to be Easily Read

Another issue you could encounter is that the text on your dry erase wall may be too small for viewers to read and understand. Staring at a computer or tablet screen for extended periods produces a strain on eyesight. And you don’t want to cause added eye strain by requiring your students in class or team members in the office to continually focus on your writing to understand the text. Your writing should be easily readable with a minimum amount of effort required to see it clearly. The vast surface area of a dry erase wall allows you to produce large letters, thus increasing readability even more.

Keep Your Wrist Still the Whole Time You’re Writing

Writing on paper is typically done through the action of the fingers and wrist, but writing on a dry erase wall is done on a much larger scale. For this reason, it’s essential to move your whole arm and shoulder while writing, allowing your shoulder to do the work so that you’ll produce much smoother and uniformly spaced letters. Also, writing is not the same as drawing, so when writing on a dry erase wall with a marker, you need to keep your hand and wrist still. Your hand should float smoothly over the dry erase wall as you write.

Avoid using your finger muscles, as your fingers should only be used to grip your dry erase marker. Too much finger motion can lead to a tighter grip on your marker and, in turn, cause tired muscles and uneven writing that’s hard to read. If you follow these instructions, you’ll produce content that’s easy to read and also keep yourself from experiencing writer’s fatigue when using your dry erase wall.

Use the Right Type of Dry Erase Marker

To ensure dark, even, distinct lines, maintain the pristine surface of your dry erase wall and protect the environment, always use high-quality, low-odor dry erase markers to write and draw on your wall. The money you save by buying inexpensive, low-quality markers will end up not being worth it in the long run, as the markings you produce will tend to be irregular and start to fade in a short time. These types of markers also emit chemicals such as ketone that are hazardous to the health of both humans and the natural environment.

If you’re experienced at writing on a dry erase wall, you can use chisel-tip dry erase markers, as they allow you to produce different thicknesses of stroke and different styles of writing. However, if you’re still developing your skill at creating a uniform and neat lettering on your wall, it’s best to opt for bullet-tip markers so you won’t have to be concerned about the angle or rotation of your marker when you begin to write.

Ensure that You Have Proper Lighting

Before starting to conduct or record in-person or video lessons or video conferences featuring a dry erase painted wall, make sure that the room you’re in is well-lit and free of distracting sounds and activity from others in the area.

Avoid or Reduce Glare or Excessive Light Reflection on Your Dry Erase Painted Wall

And although you want the environment around your wall to be well-lit, the issue of glare or excessive light reflection can come up when your camera used for a video conference or lesson is placed at an angle that catches the reflection of ambient light in the room, usually from a light mounted on the ceiling or wall, or from a projector. This issue should be remedied because it will distract from the lesson or conference and make it hard for students or team members to focus on the content presented on the wall.

The simplest way to resolve this problem is to remove the source of the glare. If this is impossible, position your video camera at an angle so that it won’t catch or reflect the glare. As a rule, locating the camera to the side of the dry erase wall or at an angle several feet from the floor will get rid of the excessive light coming from the center of the room because the camera lens is unable to capture glare from these angles. In this way, the glare won’t be noticeable, and what you write on the wall can be easily read.

Other solutions might include using a different light source such as sunlight or a lamp located far enough away from the camera so that its light is not captured by the camera.

Move Your Body with Your Writing as You Go Along

Remember to move your body along as you write on your dry erase wall. If you stand still, your body will naturally swivel as you write further and further away from your body. This effect leaves you with less ability to control the marker as your arm extends outward. It also produces a natural curve in your writing as your body sways like a pendulum, thus increasing the chances that your words will slant downward and make your content more difficult to read.

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DRY ERASE WALL QUOTES FOR FEBRUARY

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QUALITY WHITEBOARD PAINT REDUCES THE NEED FOR POLLUTING PAPER

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