Arts & crafts are a vital part of a child’s education. Some children take to arts more easily than others but all can enjoy the various activities when they’re presented in a fun way.
Arts & crafts support children’s cognitive learning and their hand-eye coordination in addition to developing creativity. For children who tend towards highly-strung, arts & crafts offer a great way for them to relax.
There are many activities which you can do with your child at home to support their skills and enjoyment in this area. Here are some ideas for preschoolers.
- Finger painting – let them go wild; kids love the sensory feeling of dipping their hands into paint and if you give them permission to do it, they’ll participate with gusto. Just put down a plastic sheet and ensure your child is wearing old clothes!
- Sticking – it doesn’t matter what they’re sticking to so much as they have a chance to do it. You can use a glue stick to avoid too much mess! Let your child cut out some pictures from an old magazine and make a collage or let them stick bits and bobs from your sewing box onto an old tissue box to make a treasure chest. Good items for sticking include lace, buttons, sequins and trims.
- Model making – whether you use clay, papier-mache, or just old boxes, there’s a real joy for children to be found in making a model. They can make robots fairly easily out of boxes, houses or cars also make a good choice. Help them make a model of their favourite animal from old newspaper and paste or for simplicities sake, make snakes from air-drying clay and paint them after they’re dry!
As your child grows, explore different mediums with them. Older children might enjoy crochet, patchwork, woodwork, and embroidery in addition to watercolour painting or sketching.
Your child’s school will usually have a robust arts curriculum – like this independent girls’ school in Surrey. At schools like this, the arts are seen as vital to children’s development.
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