Helping Your Child Grow Through Arts and Crafts.

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Can you remember arts and crafts time as a kid? It was a thrill when the teacher would bring out colorful bins filled with markers and crayons. Probably the most fun though was when a visiting artist would come to the classroom and teach us how to make something new with materials we hadn’t used before.

I can remember one such visitor to my third grade classroom. She taught has how to make fish using special organic paper made from dryer lint. We used water colors for the background, and every one of us that day was super excited about the project, even for those of us who would never identify ourselves as good artists.

It can be hard getting kids excited about art, especially if they don’t think they’re any good at it. Being self-conscious about arts and crafts starts at an early age, too, and if they don’t think they’re talented, they’ll avoid the arts.

We want our children to happily create drawings, paintings and Play-Doh sculptures. We can encourage them to hone their skills (and help them to be more confident) by introducing them to craft kits.

Arts and crafts helps our children develop fine motor coordination, neural connections and supports their creative endeavors. Seeing a project through from start to finish will boost their self-esteem too, and isn’t that what every parent wants, their child to have a healthy level of self-esteem?

Paint by Numbers Kit

Every summer when my sister and I would visit our grandmother, she would have a brand-new paint by numbers kit ready for us. The thing about the kit was that we didn’t have to be any good at painting. Like a coloring book, the kit comes with an outlined scene on a small canvas or thick, paint-friendly paper, equipped with paintbrush and paints. Inside the lined printed scene were numbers, with each number assigned a color.

All we had to do was read the directions, which went something like this:

1—yellow

2—red

3—blue

You would then paint the portions of the scene with the corresponding colors. After an hour or so (time varies depending on the detail of the painting) you had a finished masterpiece. It felt good to accomplish something, and the fact that it looked good, too, only made it all the more fun. This craft kit for the kids helps with dexterity and reading comprehension. Not only that, it gives your kid the chance to hang their creations on the wall of their bedroom!

Scale Model Kits

Painting and drawing isn’t for every kid, and these aren’t the only things you can do to help support your child’s creativity. Scale model kits help your child in their skill development, including sculpting, gluing and painting.

If a scale model kit seems a little extreme for a six-year-old, don’t worry, they are available for different skill levels, but should be worked on together by child and parent. Building a scale model together is an excellent way to share an interest with each other and it helps tighten your bond.

You and your child won’t just be building something either, the kits come with a historical summary about the origin of the model, educating you as you work to decide if the wing of the plane should be red or black.

Is your child into planes or cars? Maybe you’re both huge Star Wars fans—have you thought about building your own Millennium Falcon?

Weaving Loom Kit

We want our kids to find something their passionate about and to go for it full force. Do you think you might have a little designer on your hands? A weaving loom kit will help your child to explore texture and color as they create their own fantastic designs.

Like every designer, they’ll have to start at square one, and a weaving loom kit will help them sharpen their fine motor skills and creative thinking. When your child builds something with their own hands they will feel proud of their work and they’ll want to continue stretching that creative muscle. Your child can start by making dish rags and climb to tapestries. Won’t they be proud when they see Dad using the rag as he washes dishes or when their big sister hangs the tapestry in her room?

Help your child find the fun in arts and crafts projects, they deserve it.