Arts and crafts encourage your child to explore their senses, whilst deleloping an array of transferable skills that will help them at school and in life. Arts and crafts are good for your child's (and your) mental health and well being, as well as being a lot of good fun too! It's screen-free fun that doesn't have to cost much either; With inspiration from the world around them and a few bits and bobs, the rewards and benefits are priceless!
1.) Exploring the senses
Sight: What can you see? Look at those colours! Art encourages you to look closely and carefully at the world around you. From drawing the finest details of a tiny flower, to painting a hilly landscape, and everything in-between and beyond! Your child will be strengthening their eyes as they focus on different objects that they might be using as inspiration. They will see parts of their pictures that they are working on and they will see the final finished art work too.
Sounds: What can you hear? Listen to the crunching sound of that tin foil! You can use a huge variety of different materials when you are creating arts and crafts; They will make different sounds as you scrunch, roll and dab. Your child will be hearing so many sounds around them that might remind them of the world around them. The squelching of paint might resemble the squelching of their wellies in a muddy puddle. The sprinking of glitter may sound like tiny grains of sand falling from their bucket on the beach.
Smells: What can you smell? Does the smell of that air dry clay remind you of anything? Your child might be exploring new art materials for the first time and it's interesting to discover everything that they can. Who would think that art could be smelly?!
Tastes: We wouldn't encourage much exploration of taste unless you are specifically making edible art or using coloured yogurts as paints for young babies. As babies start to become more curious, usually around the time that they start trying different foods, they will be tempted to tuck into their paints. We always recommend you get your art supplies from a reputal retailer and ensure that you choose non-toxic art materials just incase. We also recommend close supervision from a grown-up when doing arts and crafts activities with younger children. Trust me, it is really enjoyable making arts and crafts together with young children; Plus you get that all important quality time together.
Touch: What does that feel like? Feel the smooth bumps of that bubble wrap! You can use a wide variety of materials when you are creating arts and crafts; Lots of these will have different and unusual textures from one another. From slippy wet paint, to rough dry hessian. How different are fluffy bendy pipe-cleaners to sticky squishy clay?! There is a multitude of household items, recycled items and natural objects that can be borrowed or used for their unique textures in your art work.
Feelings: As I've already mentioned, doing arts and crafts together as a family gives you some quality time together. Time out of your day to forget about jobs that need to be done and to focus on creating something together. This will make you feel like you have achieved something and will give you a sense of team work too. Putting some arts and crafts activities out for your child/children to do together with their friends is a lovely way to help them to grow their friendship bonds too. Making art makes you feel good.
2.) Developing new skills
You might already know a lot about these skills and you might already know that arts and crafts activities will help your child to use and develop these skills. Here is a quick guide to what each of the skills is and how it will benefit your child's learning and development:
Fine Motor Skills: These are the smaller more intricate movements made with your child's hands and fingers, for example when your child is doddling with coloured pencils. Even as babies and toddlers, using these skills will contribute to helping your child with their handwriting skills in the future. Fine-motor skills activities will help children to improve their handwriting and their letter formation. All of those circles and wavy lines appear in letters.
Gross Motor Skills: These are the bigger movements made by the arms and whole body and can help your child with balance and muscle development too. Gross motor skills are used in all kinds of physical activity such as walking, swiming and climbing. Think about big chalk drawings on the garden flag stones and painting those big Amazon delivery boxes to make your own Spaceship!
Hand-Eye-Coordination: This cognitive skill is about strenghthening the communication between what your brain is thinking and wants your hand to do and your hand following those instructions acurately. Practice makes perfect and developing this skill will improve speed and acuracy in tasks that use your hands, such as handwriting.
Decision Making: Making decisions in arts and crafts will help your child to develop their ability to find solutions to problems and to think analytically about answers to questions. They will make a choice; try it out; like it or dislike it; try something else; think of ways to improve it; think of things to add to it. This is the kind of process that your child will go through when they are creating a piece of art.
Confidence and Pride: Your child will be super proud of the arts and crafts that they make. They will get a lot of pleasure from visually seeing what they have achieved. This will make them feel good and will help to build up their confidence, not only in their art work, but in other things that they do too.
Mark Making: This is simply trying out different art materials such as paints, crayons and chalks and seeing what marks you can make on a surface such as a sheet of paper, a cardboard box, or in the sand on the beach. Making marks is a way to practice using both fine and gross motor skills. This will help with handwriting. Mark making is the dots, lines and textures created in a piece of art whether thats on a piece of paper or as part of a sculpture.
3.) Creative thinking skills are transferable life skills
This is a skill that shows resilience; The ability to see a mistake or something that has gone wrong as an opportunity to grown and make improvements. Creative thinking is the ability to think outside of the box when problem solving. This can help children to problem solve in different subject areas such as Maths ans Science. It can help children to develop analytical skills that can help them in subjects such as Engish and Phychology.
4.) Art is good for you!
Aswell as helping children to express their ideas and develop their imagination, art is good for children's mental health. Creative activities are calming and help children to control and process their emotions. They will gain confidence through a sense of pride in their work and this will make them feel good. Arts and crafts can also be very relaxing which can be a lovely way to wind down after a busy day.
5.) Art is fun!
The rewards and benefits of arts and crafts are priceless! It also has the super massive added bonus of being lots and lots of fun. There are so many different kinds of arts and crafts activities and art materials out there; We believe there is something for everyone to enjoy.
We would love to find out what your favourite arts and crafts activities are! Please email your photos to info@rainbowtreebox.com or tag us in your social media photos, using the hashtag #rainbowtreebox.
