Why arts and crafts are very important for kids?

For children age 3 to 8, experts say arts and crafts are the most important way to help them grow and develop. Kids love to do arts and crafts. It’s important for them to practice it both at school and at home. Be it coloring with crayons or making miniature statues from clay, folding paper to create fine origami, or designing a handmade birthday card, there are several arts and crafts activities, which can enhance the interest of the children and enrich their artistic potential. These activities can enhance mental health and wellbeing as well as fostering a whole range of developmental skills in preschoolers.

 Arts and crafts provide your child with a unique, fun opportunity to learn and improve their skills.

It also helps kids’ academic and social skills development which in turn gives them a bright future.

The benefits of Arts and crafts for kids

By introducing arts and crafts to the kids and involving them in such activities at home, you will invest in building their cognitive, physical, and social development. The following are the benefits of arts and crafts:

Physical Benefits:

Development of fine motor skills: Since most arts and crafts activities consist of moving fingers and hands, they help in developing fine motor skills. Simple actions like holding a paintbrush and coloring with pencils help strengthen muscles and improve their control.

Enhance dexterity: Arts and crafts activities can enhance the kid’s dexterity and agility. With the enhancement of fine motor skills and much practice, a child’s manual dexterity, artistic skills, and speed will also increase.

Improvement of hand-eye coordination: Engaging in activities related to arts and crafts from a very young age leads to a tremendous improvement in hand-eye coordination.

Art encourages neural connections: Art is an activity that can employ all the senses sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste depending on the activity. Children’s brain synapses fire away as they experiment and create by squishing paint between their fingers, mixing colors & materials, or drawing from imagination or what they see in front of them.

Social Benefits:

Learn to appreciate art and culture: Through arts and crafts, kids learn to value and appreciate artifacts and images across cultures and times. Experience in design, art, and crafts enable them to reflect critically on their work and those by others. They also learn about the preservation of heritage through art.

Enhance self-expression: By engaging in creative pursuits of music and arts and crafts, children get the opportunity of expressing themselves in a positive, tangible, and meaningful way.

Help in socializing: Participating, with other students in art class, gives children a chance to interact with others while sharing common interests.

Psychological benefits:

Boosts confidence: Arts and craft activities help instill a sense of achievement and pride in children, boosting their self-confidence.

Art develops problem-solving abilities: Open-ended, process-oriented art is nothing but an endless opportunity for making choices, coming to conclusions, second-guessing decisions, and evaluating results. Children become more comfortable with uncertainty and remain flexible thinkers. And the more experience they have with a variety of materials and techniques, the more likely they are to try new combinations and ideas.

Quality time / Parent Bonding: Kids just love to spend time with their parents and what better way than to do arts and crafts together! You get to spend quality time bonding with your kids and at the same time, you are creating lifelong memories to cherish. While you are crafting together you get to talk about what you are making and discuss different ideas and subject matters. And as an even bonus, your child isn’t using technology or looking at a screen!

Art helps kids understand themselves and their world: Children absorb incredible amounts of new information, and they need to process what they have learned in a safe, reflective way. Art materials provide a safe outlet for emotions.  Movement, image, color, line, and imagination all help children express themselves in a multidimensional way. This is a way that words may not be able to do, or that may be more comfortable for them than words. When we encourage our children to explore art, we encourage them to master themselves, their bodies, and a variety of tools and techniques.

Cognitive Benefits:

Enhance creativity: The opportunity to create whatever a child desires, helps foster creativity.

Sharpen skills of decision making: A child will learn to make correct and effective decisions by facing and solving artistic challenges.

Enhance memory and visual learning: A child learns about new colors and shapes through arts and crafts as well as gains familiarity with various figures and patterns. Activities like learning guitar, jewelry making, etc. need visualization and memorization of complex designs in mind.

Educational benefit

Arts and crafts not only help in the above traits but also in boosting academic performance.

Literacy: Early child literacy skills in art and crafts cover a wide range of areas – from speaking and reading to listening and understanding. When kids make art or crafts, they get to talk about their work which develops their communication skills. “Why did you choose that color?” “Tell me about what you made.” They learn new vocabulary from parents and when following verbal instructions they use their listening skills.

Math concepts: Basic math skills are often not thought of as being part of art and crafts activities. But math skills are used frequently and have a positive effect on developing mathematical skills in preschool children. Kids get to learn about and recognize different shapes, count and sort out their art supplies and even measure out lengths and sizes of art materials.