How Do Arts and Crafts Improve Coordination and Motor Skills of Children
Both children and grown-ups enjoy arts & crafts, however, they do benefit from it in diverse ways. Adults, in most cases, do it as a method for relaxing and having fun, and for little ones, arts & crafts play an important role in improving their cognitive development, more importantly, coordination and motor skills. So, how do these activities help improve the motor skills and coordination of kids? Here is what you should know:
It Can Help Develop Fine + Gross Motor Skills
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The first thing you should know is that fine motor skills will require the usage of smaller muscles in the hands, ones that are needed for things such as pressing buttons, making things from LEGOs, and holding items such as pencils. These are incredibly important for daily tasks and activities. For improving these skills, there is a wide range of things that could be done including playing with modeling clay, mostly because it’ll require molding, pressing, and creativity, all of which will improve the muscles in the hands.
On the other hand, gross motor skills will require the entire body to move, and in return, it’ll help develop the stabilizing muscles that are needed for daily activities. Although most parents don’t turn to arts and crafts for developing these muscles, they should, especially since it’s incredibly fun for little ones! For instance, you can get your kid a big piece of cardboard that they’ll use for drawing. They could do it with their feet and hands, and though it can get messy, it’ll help your kid improve their gross motor skills.
It Can Help Develop Hand-Eye Coordination + Optic Processing Skills
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Hand-eye coordination is the capacity to understand and process different info to coordinate a movement that is needed for completing specific tasks. This can only be achieved if it’s combined with the gross and fine motor skills we mentioned above. For improving these two things, there are various resources online such as Crafty Thinking that can help you get an idea of what needs to be done to develop hand-eye coordination in children.
Besides them being able to coordinate, such exercises could help with improving optical processing abilities, which is basically a way for your child to understand what is happening around them.
Without improving these skills, it might take your kid longer to learn new stuff and they’ll most likely require more effort when learning. For instance, you can try beading with them and by doing so, you’ll encourage them to memorize and make different patterns that they visualized in their mind.
Conclusion
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When you kid can show their imagination by going through some arts and crafts projects, they’ll also be encouraged to express their creative side, but more importantly, they’ll be inspired to experiment with different things. This is something that can help them with a wide range of other things, including problem-solving skills. Hence, one of the main things for you to do as a parent is to encourage art! Since you now know what you can do, don’t waste time, instead, start searching for some arts and crafts activities that’ll provide your kid with endless hours of fun while improving their cognitive skills as well!
