I love craft and its a great way to keep kids busy and off their electronic devices. Creative play with kids expands kids confidence in themselves and helps kids to see themselves as creative beings, setting them in good stead for a beautiful, happy and creative future.
Engaging in creative activities and crafts offers numerous benefits for children, contributing to their overall development. Here are five compelling reasons why it's beneficial for kids to be creative and do crafts:
Enhances Cognitive Development: Creative activities stimulate brain development, improve problem-solving skills, and enhance critical thinking. Kids learn to experiment, make decisions, and understand cause and effect through hands-on projects.
Improves Fine Motor Skills: Crafting often involves cutting, drawing, gluing, and other activities that require precision and control. These tasks help children develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination, which are essential for writing and other daily tasks. Take your time and allow your child to learn how to do the fine details such as bead threading and gluing.
Boosts Self-Esteem and Confidence: Completing a craft project gives children a sense of accomplishment and pride in their work. This boosts their self-esteem and confidence, encouraging them to take on new challenges and believe in their abilities.
Encourages Emotional Expression: Crafting provides an outlet for children to express their emotions and thoughts creatively. This can be particularly beneficial for kids who may struggle to articulate their feelings verbally, allowing them to process and communicate emotions in a healthy way.
Fosters Social Skills and Collaboration: Group crafting activities teach children how to work together, share materials, and respect each other's ideas. This fosters teamwork, communication, and social interaction, which are important skills for their personal and academic lives.
Encouraging creativity and craft activities in children supports their holistic growth, preparing them for future success both personally and academically.
Now we know that it is definitely a great thing to do with your kids, i will give you a few examples of what kinds of easy and fun craft projects you can do with a 5-7 year old.
Dream Catcher
The materials needed to make this dream catcher are likely to be at your home already or are very affordable to buy. The more colourful the better, take a paper plate, punch some holes in it and thread yarn in any kind of design criss crossing the centre of the circle. Use beads to decorate the hanging strands from the bottom of the round circle. Whilst you are making it, you can explain dreams, and sleep and have a nice little conversation with your little one.
Folding drawings
These you tube videos are great fun to draw together with your child. Its. not just drawing, its also following instructions and you can also put your own personal twist on the details.
Art for Kids Hub is a great youtube channel with very easy to follow instructions and fun projects perfect for 6-8 year olds.
Mini art gallery
Making a mini art gallery in a shoe box or a shelf at home. Create mini artworks, make frames and add little details such as your lego figures and mini chairs to create the whole room.
DIY magic wands
Kids love magic and there are no rules and limits in creativity when it comes to creating your own personalised magic wand. Using a glue gun you can add texture to chop sticks, or you can use elements you find in nature alongside coloured yarn and other found objects to make some magical wands.
Winding string around sticks are a beautiful thing to collect, and grow this collection over time.
|
 |
Friendship bracelets
Friendship bracelets have become a symbol of cultural exchange and global unity. They are often sold at fairs, festivals, and by street vendors worldwide, symbolizing a connection that transcends geographical boundaries. Beads, threads and colourful string can make cute friendship bracelets that you child can swap with friends or give you family members. Great for exercising fine motor skills like threading and knotting are great for the little fingers.
Organising your craft supplies
You can use our Goodordering transparent bag organiser to keep all your craft supplies in. The clear bag means you can always see what is inside the bag - glue, sharpies, beads and pens. The extra pockets on the sides of the bags means you can separate the items and stay organised!
Hama Beads
I just love playing with these beads, they definitely help develop fine motor skills and for younger kids you can use the larger beads.
(also known as Perler beads in the USA, or sometimes Nabbi beads elsewhere) are plastic fusible beads. The coloured beads are arranged on a plastic pegboard to form patterns or pictures. Once the pattern or picture is complete, the beads are fused together with a clothes iron.
There is no limit to creativity using these beads as each colourful bead is basically a pixel. My son made a landscape drawing as you can see below, It kept him occupied for at least 90 minutes and he was really happy with the outcome.
The best thing about these beads is that adults can join in too, in fact i had a bit too much fun making my own smiley keyring.
