Sadly, art, and by that I include, dance, drama, music and visual arts can be viewed as less important than times tables and regarded as unnecessary. Artistic experiences, irrespective of your level of accomplishment and talent, are fundamental to personal development, as it fuels the imagination and imagination, in turn, fuels creativity.
These skills are in great demand by employers. Arts foster the development of transferable skills and can help boost overall academic achievement. Creative activities help children develop problem solving, concentration and critical thinking and more. Activities such as drama, music and arts and crafts help children think for themselves more and work out answers for themselves. Keep reading for some more awesome reasons to get creative this weekend.
Fine Motor Skills Development for Kids
Grabbing pens and paint brushes, using scissors (carefully!), all help kids develop their fine motor skills and muscles. As your child learns to use these different tools and perfects their craft, these strengthened muscles will help your child with other tasks such as tying their shoelaces and other fine movements. Obviously, these skills will help exponentially with many tasks.
Our Ed-ventures Homeschooling kit for kids age 3-4+ has over 40 activities many of which help develop fine motor skills through quick guided activities.
Cognitive development
There are so many different arty activities you can do to practice patterns and processes which help children to develop an understanding of how things work. For example, planning out how to design a pattern, what order to layer paint colours, what happens when you mix certain colours or materials together. It’s all an experiment which helps your kid’s brains grow and develop!
Develop Math and Geometry Skills
Again, creating patterns, drawing shapes, comparing shapes, drawing perspectives, all helps kids develop their knowledge of shapes as well as spatial reasoning. The perfect way to practice these concepts is through play and experimentation!
Increase vocabulary and descriptive language
Continue the learning by asking your child more about their work. Ask about the colours, the shapes, the textures, a story about the scene. This is a great way for them to develop their language skills and encourage active play. It is a fun way for you to spend quality time with your child by exchanging open ended questions.
Improve concentration
Attention spans and concentration in kids is unfortunately declining, but not all is lost. Engaging in arty activities and open-ended play is an engaging way to get our kids focusing on a specific task for a little while. Aside from our board games, we have tonnes of activities you can try at home for free. The latest edition of our monthly activity packs is live and it is art themed! Just sign up for our newsletter here to get a download link for all of the packs!
Spend quality time together & encourage wellbeing
Just spending time with your child creates a special time for you both which is good for your child’s development and wellbeing. Time spent with a committed adult can help your child feel happier, be more relaxed and build resilience for their teenage years. That’s why it is so important to lay the groundwork early on. Setting aside some regular time for just the two of you can help your child to handle the times when they don’t have your full attention. We all lead such busy lives now that those times do occur, when you cannot immediately respond to your child’s request for attention, so surely it makes to start building coping strategies with your youngsters.
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