The Importance of Arts and Crafts in Early Education

 We all know that arts and crafts play an important role when it comes to personal growth and development. However, when a child starts learning arts and crafts in the early years, it boosts their growth even faster. It improves their academic performance as well as emotional and social performance. 

Including art as an important part of your child’s daily routine can have an enormous impact on your child’s growth. Not only will it prepare your child for academic success in school, but it will foster early emotional development and offer your child the opportunity to express themselves creatively. 

Believe it or not, through art, your child will: 

Strengthen Spatial Reasoning And Early Math Skills

When kids engage in an art project, even from an early age, they explore size and shapes. Kids begin evaluating and comparing objects, strengthening early math skills. More importantly, drawing, painting, and other art activities help kids to develop spatial reasoning skills. Important to STEM-related fields and activities, spatial reasoning allows kids to mentally imagine three-dimensional shapes, which in turn prepares students for complex math and science concepts. 

Build Critical Language Skills

Think about a time your child completed an art project. No matter if it was a drawing or craft they made, your child was undoubtedly proud of their artwork. In fact, your child probably will tell you all about their project, how they made it, and the process they took to complete their crafty creation.

This is exactly how artwork strengthens early language skills. As kids talk about their work and describe the process, they build language skills. Keep the conversation going by asking questions about their work, and introducing vocabulary words that might apply. 

Hone Fine Motor Skills

Developing a proper pencil grip is critical to early writing skills. As kids use crayons and paintbrushes, they develop the fine motor skills needed to grasp a pencil to begin writing. Cutting with scissors, and glueing small parts on paper help kids develop the dexterity they need to perform a whole host of everyday tasks important to educational success. 

Practice Decision Making  

When you think about it, kids aren’t in control of much in their lives. Kids are born dependent on mom and dad. Art can serve as one of the very first outlets for independence. As kids complete art projects, they make choices about colours to use and are able to develop decision-making skills to personalize their artwork. This independence fosters early critical thinking and analysis skills as children think through their choices and make decisions. 

Foster Emotional Development and Regulation

Kids develop emotionally through artwork by expressing their individuality and emotions through their work.  By having the free reign to design what they wish, they can further explore and cultivate their unique individual differences. Art can also serve as a way for kids to communicate their feelings. This in turn gives kids a tool to use to regulate their emotions and a way for parents to understand their children.  Some kids even turn to art as an escape, or a way to handle stress. 

Check out a collection of worksheets for early arts and crafts activities on our website or in our app on the App Store and Google Play. Check the video below to learn how to give your kid a brain break from rigorous academic learning.

It’s obvious that art is a critically important aspect of a child’s development. While at first glance artwork seems to be purely an activity based on entertainment value, it’s clear that artwork is key to developing a well-rounded child.  When your child needs a break, find a fun craft to create, or colour a picture; your child will still be learning, and more importantly— they’ll love it!

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Benefits of Paper Crafts for Preschoolers?

Art and craft help your preschoolers in multiple ways that encourage them to experiment with the things around them. No one can deny the fact that papercraft is perfect for your small kid and its imaginative power. In a time where technology is becoming overpowering, craft keeps your child away from more screen time and toxicity, addictivity of the technology. 

Here are the top benefits of paper crafts for your preschoolers: 

Papercraft Improves Fine Motor Skills: 

Papercraft encourages children to draw, tear, glue, and paint besides other exercises that promote dexterity. These activities help your child to develop and strengthen fine motor skills. Paper crafts put tangible blocks in preschoolers’ hands, allowing them to focus on each step separately, and using their motor skills to make adjustments. 

Fostering Imagination: 

When your child gets involved with papercraft, there is no end to what they can imagine. The journey of their imagination starts with a rough piece of paper and ends with the final product. With every new craft, your child discovers a new aspect of creativity and their preferences. From colour choices to the material, they have to make choices of all that by themselves. It helps them not only with imagination but also with creativity and decision making. 

Understanding and following instructions: 

Another major benefit of papercraft is that your child learns to listen to what other people are saying and follow them to get the desired result. We all know that dealing with a child is not an easy task but by following step-by-step instructions they can reach the desired goal.

Stronger child-parent bonding: 

When your child makes a craft with you, it makes you closer to your child and improves communication between you. You can know their imagination, ideas and creativity and shape it in a constructive way. Same way, your child can know your views, ideas and ways of executing things. This way you both can share your world together in a creative way. 

Inspiring Critical Thinking

Paper crafts inspire your preschooler to think critically. They have endless possibilities as they work through their project, so this is an excellent learning opportunity to see how their choices affect the outcome. If they do something well or make a choice that they like, they are likely to repeat it. On the other hand, if they see that a decision didn’t have the outcome they wanted, they can adjust to improve the next time. Critical thinking activities make your child more likely to explore their own ideas and find new, creative ways to reach a goal.

Expressing Emotions

Children express their emotions in a variety of ways. Paper crafts add one more platform for them to share what they might be feeling and give you insight into their emotional health. For example, if they’re drawing a face, and the face is frowning, it opens a line of communication so that you can ask questions (e.g., “Why did you choose a frown instead of a smile?”) This example is one of many, but ultimately, by watching your child’s choices and asking questions, you allow them to share their feelings in ways they might find more comfortable.

Encouraging Social Skills

Paper crafts create a collaborative environment where your child can work with you or a peer to meet a shared goal. This collaboration helps them to develop communication skills and gives them common ground with others their age. Even children who have different interests can come together to work on a craft. 

Beyond these seven benefits, engaging your child in a papercraft can spark joy and promote new concepts through creative learning. If you’re searching for at-home activities for your preschooler, The Gardner School shares early childhood development tips and activities on our blog and our Pinterest profile. 

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Why Are Craft Activities for Kids So Important?

For kids, arts and crafts are not limited to creating a piece of work to place on a fridge or a dining table. It is a way for your children to express themselves and bring their creativity out. Online craft shop are important for your child to develop critical skills for school and social functioning, as well as for life beyond the school years. While your child messes up with a typhoon of glue, paint, glitter, toilet roll tubes and wild imagination, they enter themselves in a world where they can grow exceptionally.    

Here are the reasons why art and craft activities are so important for your kids: 

→ Appreciation For Art and Culture: 

When your child gets involved with art and culture, they start valuing the importance of storytelling and the culture of multiple societies at the same time. With the understanding of design, art and craft, kids reflect critically on all the work around them - they start thinking like designers and artists! Moreover, they also learn to preserve heritage, history and culture with their art when they grow up. And you can clearly see that almost all the information we have now about heritage, history and culture has come to us in a form of art in one way or the other. 

→ Developing Cognitive Skills: 

With the activities of art and craft, a child develops critical thinking that helps them in growing problem-solving skills, flexible thinking, and understanding of cause-and-effect relationships in art and life as well. Moreover, art and craft help kids in boosting their self-esteem and confidence! 

→ Understanding and Following Instructions: 

To create a piece of art and craft, your child needs to understand given instructions and follow them to get tangible results. Not following the rules also teaches them that they have to face the consequences accordingly. So, with art and craft, your child learns to do things the right way in one go. 

→ Learning Teamwork And Social Skills: 

Creating a piece of art with creativity requires teamwork, communication, social skills and cooperation with people around to get meaningful results. Moreover, planning a craft and art session at a child's birthday party is a great idea to make your child a team player and a leader. 

→ Experimenting with Things: 

Craft projects are a great way for children to learn something new and experiment with existing crafts and thus it encourages your child to experiment with your craft and art. 

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