How Crafts for Kids can be a vehicle for vital learning skills

Among activities done with children, crafts is one of the most popular.
Kindergarten and nursery school teachers, doting grandmothers, loving aunts
feel that since children usually love pasting and cutting, then crafts is a great way to spend time with each other. This is often done around holiday tiem

Everyone knows that kids love to color and paint and since it is really hard to get many children to concentrate for long periods of time on any activity, crafts is the perfect  way to fill that time.

The big problem here is that adults want a realistic looking project. Young children, however, are usually not ready to create their own realistic projects, so impatient adults create them and have the children copy them. I call this “copycat crafts”.

If you are a real traditional sort and have no problem with creating robots out of your children then go right ahead and keep doing these kinds of crafts. The internet is full of them
an there is no dearth of copycat crafts out there for you to choose from.

I do want, however, to give you a short explanation as to why copycat crafts aren’t good for children. You can also go download a free report  that will help you with all kid crafts by explaining to you in detail the pros and cons of copycat crafts and educational crafts.

In a nutshell, copycat crafts for kids makes the kids become robotic by not allowing them thinking skills, or has them solving any problems. Let me explain to you why tradtional crafts can be so detrimental to your children.

Art has so many benefits it is a shame to use it just to remember holidays. Of course, as the children are involved in this fun expereince they should also be gaining lots of skills.

When working with crafts in an educational format, kids learn thinking skills plus develop greater initiative and self esteem.

Many art proponents tout the fine motor skills children are gaining by doing arts and crafts, that however, is all that they are probably getting in copycat crafts.

I have a great post for you that gives a great example of creativity in art by showing you how children can make a crafts activity of flowers using both methods.

There are so many art opportunities during the year but, many adults only stick to holiday time.

So where do we go from here?
If you like the idea of adding more creativity to kids crafts you can check out  Educational arts and crafts which will give you lots of crafts for kids to do that are truly educational.

If you want to try doing educational crafts on your own, however, and not copycat crafts  then there 4 points  to keep in mind when choosing a crafts for your children.

1.    Does this activity allow for any problem solving?
2.Does this activity allow for any thinking?
3.    Where’s the creativity here?
4.How will my child feel when she realizes the amount that actually came from her?

If you keep these thoughts in mind when choosing crafts then not only will you be commemorating the holidays and spending quality time with your children but they also will be gaining vital skills