Children love coloring, drawing, sticking, threading and making things. But it’s not just about the fun.
Research shows that encouraging children to be creative and imaginative in their early years helps them to be more resourceful and resilient when facing barriers and obstacles in later life. Creating things from their imagination helps kids to find solutions and discover different ways to approach problems. For example, when colouring in or drawing a picture, a child is making all their own decisions about where to put things and what to emphasise — which is really empowering and encourages independence.
Making art and crafting is also a great way to discover that it’s okay to make mistakes and that getting things wrong can lead to a whole new solution. There is also strong evidence to suggest that activities like connecting shapes and following or creating patterns taps into the same parts of the brain that are used for complex problem solving like maths.
Giving children the opportunity to be creative when they’re small can therefore help them to connect all the different parts of their brains and their bodies, helping to build a well-rounded personality and to promote mental wellbeing – as well as honing physical connections such as the fine motor skills they’ll need for activities like writing later on.
Perhaps most simply, arts and crafts are a great way to unplug and unwind, which is so important for this generation of kids who have grown up with technology and social media as the norm.
So what can you do at home to give your children lots of opportunities to get creative and share new experiences? We reckon our top 10 Arts and Crafts Kits for kids are a great start!
