The benefits of pursuing creative arts and crafts doesn’t just stop with physical benefits, but also provides strong mental and educational benefits - and not just for kids! Here is a list of 14 (yes, 14!) benefits provided by different arts and crafts projects:
The Benefits of Arts and Crafts
The physical benefits:
Fine motor skills
Most art projects involve accurately moving the hands and fingers, improving muscle strength and control with fine motor movements.
Dexterity
Arts and crafts increase manual dexterity and also agility. With time and practice, they become much faster at performing more precise skills.
Hand-eye coordination
Almost all art must link your hand’s coordination with your eye. This skill is particularly important to develop early in life, and greatly helps with improving kid’s sporting skills.
The mental benefits:
Self-esteem
Art and craft activities give kids a much needed sense of achievement and pride, which in turn builds their self-confidence.
Patience
A lot of art involves actively practicing patience, whether it is waiting for glue to dry, or being willing to try and make mistakes so you can improve.
Self expression
Creative activities are one of the only true ways to ‘express yourself’. These activities can help to bring out the hidden emotions of introverted children, while also being able to express and form their own individual identity.
Socialising
Arts and crafts can often involve social interaction with other children, whether it be with parents joining in on projects or socialising with kids with similar interests. It is an avenue to build and strengthen friendships.
Parent bonding
There aren’t many activities that can ‘truly entertain’ children and adults in equal capacities, but arts and crafts is among these. They are a great way to strengthen, or begin parent-child relationships.
The educational benefits:
Creativity
Of course! There’s no surprise here. Arts and crafts are one of the best avenues of exploring early childhood creativity and self expression.
Memory
Kids learn about shapes, colours, symmetry and patterns through practicing art. Seom crafts involve visualising and producing designs, which greatly put their memory into practice.
Decision making skills
Artistic challenges are some of the hardest to solve and involve kids to make quick and correct decisions. This will improve their ability to face other problems and make quick decisions when they inevitably come.
Flexibility
Unlike math, art and crafts can be achieved in more than one way. There are no correct answers, techniques or results - teaching kids that they can achieve great results from outside of the box thinking and alternative methods.
Literacy
Art is designed to be shared, and kids must put their literacy skills into practice by speaking, reading and listening when communicating about their work. Parent feedback can provide them with new words and concepts to incorporate into their vocabulary.
Math
Although math isn’t usually associated with arts and crafts, kids will often need to learn how to measure lengths and sizes, and count to create symmetry.