How to engage your kids in arts and crafts?

Kids are born creative and inquisitive. These two qualities go hand in hand extremely well and make it obvious for your kid to like arts and crafts naturally. A little nudge in the right direction and support is all you need to keep the artist in them encouraged and growing.

Introducing your kid to art and crafts

Introducing your kid to arts and crafts by age is very important. If you are yet to introduce arts and crafts to your kids, you can do it now as it is never too late to do so. For toddlers and preschoolers, you can start with the basic supplies like colored papers and crayons, or teach them handprint or printmaking artworks and let them experiment with different materials like stickers, cotton, fabric, sticks or leaves. Kids that go to school, on the other hand, are mostly interested in creating things to play with and can make more detailed crafts. And as for the older kids, they can experiment with different materials like porcelain clay or prefer paper crafts like paper quilling. You can also try involving them in crafts of other cultures.

Stepping Stones to Arts and Crafts

Here are a few things that can be the stepping stones to introducing your kids to arts and crafts:

★ The Favourite Story/Character
To start with, you can take up your child’s favorite story, a favorite book, or favorite character and go for crafts based on them. If you can’t think of anything based exactly on it, improvise or go for generic crafts that are based on the characters of your child’s favorite book. This will help to draw more of your child’s attention towards art and crafts.

★ Observe your Child’s Interests
Most kids go through different phases of intense obsession. It is usually things with which your kid connects the most and could be cartoon characters or things like trains or trucks.

If your kid has an obsession like this, it can serve as the perfect setting for your kid to start doing art and crafts. Scrapbooking is a great idea for kids irrespective of their ages. Kids can cut out pictures of their obsession and stick them in scrapbooks or draw them on their own.

★ Their Experiences
For kids, creativity is everywhere. Kids get amused by many thighs, like their first time in the rain, visiting a new place, or tasting some new dish. You can make use of this kind of amusement and channelize it into arts and crafts.

Provide your kid with his art materials and let his thought flow. If he prefers doing something more with his hands, let him try different types of crafts.

★ Engage in Art Talk
Art is not just confined to exhibitions and museums; it is all around us. You can draw your kid’s attention towards arts and crafts by showing him different decorative posters or pictures and talk about the colors and shapes.

As for the older kids, you can take them to a museum that caters to their interest or an art exhibition of their choice and talk to them about art.

★ Introduction to Artists
Tossing around the names of a few artists now and then and talking about their work can also get your kid’s attention, especially if he seems to have an affinity towards a particular style of work or the works of any artist in particular.

You can also encourage their interest by providing them with books that will help them learn more about the works of famous artists. Most of the artist works are deep and have hidden details. Therefore you should let your kid observe them closely and try to figure out what the paintings portray.

★ Recycle and Reuse
What better way to encourage creativity than coming up with an innovative way to recycle or reuse things?

You can provide your kid with an empty box and can and ask him to make something creative with it. The possibilities are endless, and you might be surprised at how your kid recycles or reuses the item he was provided with.

★ Engage in Art Together
The participation of family members can also encourage your kid to do arts and crafts. Sometimes it so happens that kids feel they are not good at art just because they can’t do it realistically. While drawing or painting with them, you can help them understand that there can be more than one way to look at one picture and that it doesn’t necessarily have to be perfect.

Try to encourage your kids to draw their versions of the surroundings or cut out paper to create patterns of their own. You can also encourage your kid to try to create a story with his drawings or cut-outs.

Some Art and Craft Ideas to Engage Kids

The outcome of engaging your kids with arts and crafts is multifaceted. It develops neural networks in the brain, hand-eye coordination as well as gross and fine motor skills.

Here are some arts and crafts ideas for your kids:

★ Toddler Art
Art for toddlers is exploring the world around him, his body, different materials, and tools, etc. Some art activities for toddlers are fingerpainting, playdough with poke-ins, sticker collage art, painting with rollers and wheels, and do-a-dot markers.

★ Painting
Kids, irrespective of their age, love to paint. Some painting activities to engage your kid are marble rolling, spin painting, face painting, and body painting. Your kid can also experiment with different types of brushes and other materials on other surfaces.

★ Watercolor Arts
Watercolor arts like simple painting, watercolor resist, printing, multimedia art, and dyeing are a nice idea for your kid to try. You can encourage your kid to explore different techniques of watercolor such as liquid watercolor, watercolor pads, etc.

★ Printmaking
Printmaking is an interesting art form you can try. There is a wide range of printmaking techniques and printmaking art activities for him to explore. Some of them are mono printing, styrofoam painting, string and yarn printing, handprints, car wheel printing.

★ 3D Art and Sculpture
You can also encourage your kid to try constructing different things with materials like toothpicks, wood, cardboard, etc. Some 3D art and sculpture ideas to try include toothpick sculptures, cardboard constructions, wood sculptures, and ice sculptures.

★ Stained Glass and Suncatcher Crafts
Stained glass and suncatchers are loved by all as they extraordinarily capture light and color. You can encourage your kids to make some suncatchers with melted beads or paper plate frames or stained glass with melted crayons.

★ Clay and Playdough
Creating things with playdough is not only creative but also very therapeutic. There are many playdough ideas and techniques that your kids can try to keep themselves engaged.

★ Collage Art
Collage art is probably one of the easiest art and craft ideas to keep your kids engaged. Besides basic paper collage, your kids can also go for sticker collages, contact paper collages, 3D collages, and mixed media artwork.

★ Nature Art
Art and Craft ideas like nature arts can not only get your kids creative but also closer to nature. They can try out land arts, leaf printings, sand painting, and rock arts.

★ Outdoor Art
Outdoor arts allow your kids to have more space, get extra messy as well as use outdoor equipment. Outdoor arts include spray painting, chalk art, splatter painting, ball painting, and a lot more.

To keep the inner artist in your kid alive as he grows up and keep him encouraged in arts and crafts, you should save his artworks and create an archive of his best art and crafts times.