How Arts and Crafts Benefit a Child's Development

It is easy to overlook all the benefits of incorporating arts and crafts throughout the week at a day care center. Arts and crafts can be used to enhance many skills for a child including fine motor skills, math skills, communication skills, and creativity. Here are a few more details about the benefits of incorporating arts and crafts in a day care center:

Fine motor skills - A child learning to hold and use scissors, crayons, and markers helps tremendously with developing their fine motor skills. In addition to that, they also work on their fine motor skills when they learn to pick small things up during arts and crafts time. 

Self-esteem - A child usually feels a sense of accomplishment after completing a piece of artwork. This can really help build a child’s self-esteem and give them more confidence. It is important for day care teachers or other caregivers to tell each child how wonderful their artwork is while they are working and after they complete it. 

Creativity - Arts and crafts can be a wonderful outlet that allows a child to be creative, especially if you just give a child a bunch of art materials and let them create whatever they want. This will give the child the freedom to explore all the materials and express themselves through their artwork.

Math skills - If you do an organized step by step craft at a day care center, it can help with developing a child’s math skills. For example, if a teacher or caregiver says something like, “find two eyes to put on your dog,” the child will have to find the eyes and count out two. The same thing can be done with any sort of step by step craft, if you put the materials in bowls in front of the kids. 

Communication skills - It is important to ask open ended questions after a child creates a piece of art such as, “can you tell me about what you made?” This gives the child space to either tell you what it is or just talk about the colors they used. Day care teachers should stay away from asking questions like, “what is that?” because it can make the child feel like their artwork has to be something specific.

If you are looking for a day care center that uses arts and crafts to help children learn, contact Anna’s Day Care today. Our child care is available to families living in San Jose, CA; Santa Clara, CA; Sunnyvale, CA, and the surrounding areas.