I am new here and haven't posted much, I hope it's okay I ask a question already! Are crafts important/beneficial for child development? We do play dough, paint, color, water paint, chalk outside, beads, and baking and there is access to glue, sequins, buttons, paper, etc. I tried Google but I didn't find anything that really answered my question. There is a lot on Pinterest for crafts but I'm just wondering, is it actually helping children to learn when you cut out shapes and tell them how to glue them? Maybe it's good to learn following directions and the kids I have are missing out.

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I don't do crafts. I do not think they are beneficial.
Children can learn how to follow directions other ways.

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I do them just not as often as I used to. Parents don't seem to appreciate them, they get left in cubbies for weeks. My kids would rather play or do other activities than crafts.

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Personally I think there is a huge benefit! They can have self expression through using different mediums as they choose. They can explore textures and shapes of the art supplies. They can "tell a story" with their art.

They also tune their fine motor skills, learn to hold a pencil or crayons or markers, they also learn to grasp little buttons or googly eyes, peel stickers off the paper, thread beads onto pipe cleaners, etc.

For an end product craft they do learn to follow directions, like putting together a puzzle. They can learn each piece has a home. But I also let them have freedom to put the pieces where they choose too...who cares if the leg comes out of the ear if that's where they want it, etc.

They also gain pride in their work! My kids get so excited "I can't wait to show my Mommy! She will be so proud!" Even though to me it looks like a brown blob, to the child it's an elephant and they are proud!

Besides all that my kids LOVE art! It keeps them occupied for long periods and they are enjoying themselves

There a million benefits to art!

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No, I don't think they are necessarily beneficial. I've never done crafts with kids of any kind until I once had a group of 5-year old girls that really wanted to create particular things, so we did a few crafts. I don't think it hurt them.

But, I DO think it's important to make sure that children can cut on a line and glue properly (not just put tons of glue all over) before they go to kindergarten.

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I think it is beneficial - fine motor skills, hand eye coordination, and using different materials is always just fun. I am not a crafty person per se - I draw stick figures - but I do what I can.

Some of my dck's love crafts, others not so much.

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Art and crafts are two totally different things in my book. You are describing art.
Crafts are cut out this circle and glue here. Color this part Orange etc.
Art has huge benefits. Crafts do not. Crafts are about the end product not the process.

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I definitely think they have their place. Just like some people frown on kids using coloring books I think coloring books have their value too. I don't do crafts all the time, more around holidays or seasonal crafts. Maybe I'm different from moms these days(the ones who leave them in their cubbies) but when my kids ever brought something home from school with pride on their faces, I LOVED it!
Fine motor skills; you can include premath skills as you do them; following directions and developing their listening skills; learning to make decisions; learning to be proud of what they can accomplish on their own as well as learning that if something doesn't turn out the way they wanted or expected it's not the end of the world; social interaction; plus who knows how what you do today with them will affect their goals for years to come.
Using crafts and art opens up their creative side and helps their imagination soar. Using different tools, doing different things help keep a little ones' life interesting. We made cute little yogurt cup reindeer, the kids loved them and couldn't wait to place them out in their homes to help decorate for Christmas. Not tons of creativity doing them but they contributed to decorating their house.
My .02.

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I completely agree with everything Craftymom said. Let me add some to what she said.

When we are born, we have an enormous amount of synapses in our brain that transfer information to each other. The more we do, learn, use our brain in every way possible, the more the synapses grow and remain strong. The synapses that are not being used get pruned kind of like picking off the dying leaf of a plant. The brain is really a 'use it or lose it' organ. So, by exposing children to as many different experiences as possible, you are actually helping their brain grow. You're helping their synapses reach out to each other and form strong bridges of memory, ability, etc. Now, since we start out having many more synapses then we really need, pruning is necessary. However, being creative is not a synapses that we want to be pruned.

Kids learn differently and express themselves differently. Some are technical, some comprehend math more, some are more verbal, some are able to learn about their world and express themselves better through arts and crafts. If the child is not exposed to doing arts and crafts, they won't be able to find out whether they like it or not. If they only try it a time or two, they haven't been exposed to the many different ways of creating arts and crafts. There's coloring on paper with crayons, markers, painting with brushes, and finger painting. You can do those things on different surfaces; cardboard boxes to make a castle, make a car, etc. There's clay they can make things and then actually keep their clay creation rather than having to destroy it. There's painting ceramics, drawing, and crafts ha! You can make just about anything you think of. There's building a bird house, building a model car, making paper crafts, making wood crafts, making paper bag puppets and sock puppets. There's so many different things kids can create with arts and crafts, that unless they are exposed to the many different types of arts and crafts, they will not know if they like arts and crafts or not.

Kids do open their creative mind by playing pretend with toys, but it uses a different part of their brain and makes them learn how to be more creative when they do arts and crafts. It truly does help their brain develop. Here'a a link that tells you some ways arts and crafts help children develop. http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/ea...?ArticleID=257

Yes, you can make an elephant out of blocks, but it's so different when you draw an elephant on paper. Also, you have to take the blocks apart and destroy you elephant when it's time to clean up. But arts and crafts, a child can keep forever to look back at and continue to be proud of what they created.

As far as keeping it forever, I know some parents don't acknowledge the child's work at all, but some parents might keep some of the child's arts and crafts to show them when they are older. My kids and I got a real kick out of the art work my mom kept from when I was a kid. I kept some of my kids' arts and crafts and showed them their work from when they were little and they loved to see what they had made.

You could make a scrapbook for the kids of their art work if you don't think the parents will keep the individual papers. I would let the kids take some of their art home on a typical daily basis, but maybe once a week or two, you could keep one of their creations and put it in a scrapbook for them. Then when the book is full, you can give it to the parents. They might be more likely to keep the scrapbook for years to come if they won't keep the individual papers.

So, yes, even though they can be creative through imaginary play, they also need to be creative through arts and crafts.

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For little kids, I don't think crafts are about the end product. They are about being creative, coming up with an idea of a thing to make, cutting, gluing, nailing, screwing things together, which makes you use your brain in ways that you don't typically use it; thinking in ways you don't typically think, which grows your synapses (brain waves).

Many kids' craft end product look nothing like they were supposed to, but the experience that they had and the way they thought while making their very crooked one legged popsicle angel who's halo hangs to her side, that's what helps the child develop for the long run. The fact that the ending result is not at all what it should look like doesn't matter. The experience of making it is what matters. As the child has more and more experiences making crafts, their ending product will be more of what was expected. If the child realizes that they really enjoy creating in a certain way, they will continue to work on that skill, such as wood work, or paper crafting, and as they get older, might become a very skilled artist. But the process of creating it no matter what it really turns out to be or look like is what truly matters in helping the child learn and develop.

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Once again, that sounds more like art to me. Maybe I have some weird understanding of what crafts are. Growing up when we did crafts, there was no creativity. Everyone glued everything in the same places, colored the pieces the same colors etc.
When I think of crafts, I think of the end products... Crafts for parents... You know, handprint snowmen, footprint raindeer.... It's about the end product with specific instructions, not about the process and the kids being creative.

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depends on what kind and how you do them.

I am a firm believer that arts can say a 1000 words no matter how old you are.
I think it is an open door to communication, especially for those that can't yet speak with words.
Correct me if I am wrong, but art helps develop the right side of the brain and also helps build important skills that benefit a child's development.

crafts can teach patience, which is necessary to learn for those about to enter school. Open ended art helps fine motor skills and so on.

I am big on both of these, but most of mine are open ended and of the child's interest.

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Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me...I read the original post as "art and crafts" as 2 separate things. Now I see it says "are crafts"

But yes I agree they are 2 different things. I do both. My kids enjoy both and I feel both are beneficial.

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That's the traditional way of thinking of a craft, yes. But, when you let a child have the freedom to make their craft "theirs" it's still a craft, it just doesn't look like it's "supposed" to.

I believe that that's okay.

I like to make an example of the craft for display and let them decide if they want it to look like mine or if they want a "one legged Popsicle angel with her halo on the side."

even if it doesn't look "right" it's still giving them the benefits that "crafts" come with. It's only the adults that notice that it's "wrong." To them, it's perfect.

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Ah, got it. I didn't know there were traditional and non traditional ways to do crafts. Thanks for enlightening me makes more sense now.
I just stick all the art supplies on the table and that's that.

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Yes, the expected outcome of a hand print snowman is this perfect outline of a hand with the eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons placed just so. But, if you truly let the child do the work, it won't be perfect. If you have the child place one hand on a piece of paper and use his other hand to do his best to trace his hand, then in his mind, he's thinking, "go slow, go up, around the thumb and down the other side, and up around the finger, and oops, I dropped the pencil, pick the pencil up, fix my fingers to hold it right, line up my other hand with the space that I already traced my thumb and one finger, okay, keep my hand still on the paper, now go up the other finger..." A child doesn't usually have to think in those ways while playing. It makes them use their brain differently. Then, they have to look at the hand print and decipher just where the eyes, nose, and mouth would go. So they have to be able to compare the hand print to a person's face and use spatial recognition to figure out the correct location of the eyes, nose, and mouth.

Doing crafts really takes a lot of thinking that us adults don't acknowledge and take for granted because most of the requirements are second nature to us. We know that you glue wiggle eyes towards the top of a paper bag and put them across from each other, we can, in seconds figure out where the eyes would go on a paper bag puppet, but for a little kids, it really makes them think and compare a person's face to an empty paper bag.

Now, if you are doing most of the work for the child or giving constant instructions of exactly where to put things on their creation, then, no, it's not helping the child as much as it should. Yes, it will teach the child to listen to instructions, but it's not teaching them to think, figure things out, and compare their blank item to something in the real world that they are trying to create a copy of. It's better if you guide the child by saying, 'Where should the eyes go? Look at my face, or your friend's face and see where our eyes are and then look at your snowman. Where do you think the snowman's eyes should be? That would help the child think and learn rather than you saying 'put the eyes here'.

As far as doing arts and crafts with very young children infants - 2's, you will be introducing them to the idea of arts and crafts. You will be making their synapses grow and forming memories and learned behaviors that they can refer back to once they are more capable of actually doing the activity themselves. It's the same idea as talking with them. As infants, they don't understand that we are saying, ' come on, lets go bye, bye.' But the more you say it to them, and as they get older, the more they can comprehend, react, and eventually say on their own that they are going bye-bye. That's the same with anything you need to teach children. If you clean up the 6 month old's toys with him and tell him what you are doing, in a few months, he understands 'clean up' and is able to put toys away. That's the same with arts and crafts. You start working with them when they are young and really can't do arts and crafts by themselves, as they get older, they understand how to do the activity and use the tools they need to create their masterpiece on their own.

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Play dough helps build the muscles in the hands for small motor skills like buttoning, Zipping, and writing, plus kids love it!

Creative art like painting is soothing, develops spatial awareness, can be a science lesson....red mixed with yellow makes orange, is a creative outlet, etc.

Will kids develop without creative art experiences? Sure, but they sure enjoy it!

Crafts are another story!

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We definitely do a lot of art and sensory play. I see crafts like Jenboo. Thank you for the replies though, I'll definitely have to remember to work on scissor skills. We cut pine needles off of branches today but that's different than cutting on a line!

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Are crafts beneficial/imporant?

In small doses, yes. Why? Because, like it or not, these are the parent pleasers. And they pay the bills

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Yep.

Are they beneficial? Maybe/ maybe not. But they can be fun, and if DCKs are having fun they aren't trying to color the ceiling.

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I don't do crafts.

My parents do not expect crafts.

They know this coming in.

Art however is something at least one child is participating in here all day, other than at meal and nap times.

Supplies are out and available for the kids to use as they see fit.

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I think they are important. Help with fine motor skills. Learning to hold a crayon, use scissors and glue are all important. Not to mention to nurture the child's creativity. You can always see with kindergarten kids whose parents haven't encouraged crafts. Developmentally they are behind on using crayons, pencils, scissors. The drawings are scribbles and they haven't advanced to drawing.

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I agree. We were told at Kindergarten orientation for our DS last year that kindergarten is now what first grade used to be. Kids need to go to kindergarten already knowing how to cut straight, paste, draw simple shapes, etc.

If kids don't know these things, teachers will be teaching the kids this stuff instead of how to read and add and subtract. So I dunno ... I'd rather teach this stuff to the young ones so the school teachers can concentrate on more important things. And I teach reading and math, too, but not like the teachers do.

I always have to keep in mind my area, too. I come from a very competitive school district and many people move here for the schools.

If we didn't have these schools, I would still do both art & crafts. Art is important for brain development and crafts bring joy to kids and parents. The look of their little faces when they make a craft is priceless! My DS is in first grade and he still feels this way. They make crafts all the time in school. Yet when I go into his school, he shows me his because his is "different" and "way cooler" than everyone else's.

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We do soooo much open ended art here. The kids love it, and I know they are benefitting from it. But these are also the things that wind up at the bottom of the bag and get tossed. the parent pleasers wind up on the fridge, go figure.

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I teach all of this without doing crafts. I don't think you need to do a craft to teach kids how to color or draw shapes or cut in a straight line. My twos love cutting with scissors. I give them paper with lines on it and they will cut on the lines. They love to color!! They are starting to recognize more shapes. They draw "circles" all the time. They also glue all the time as well. I will cut out people and animals from magazines and they will glue them to their papers.
My twos could care less about crafts. They don't care about what they are "making". They are proud of their paintings and drawings.

Now if we are taking school age, its a whole different story.

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Contrary to my username I do not do crafts with my daycare kids. My kids are also 3 and under. I will rarely do a little something to send home for a holiday, but we do not regularly do crafts. Coloring is pretty much it for us. Every once in awhile we'll paint (if my group is small or I'm feeling particularly brave).

For my age group, while I do feel that working with different processes and art products IS beneficial... I feel that these things can be worked on at home. With my super young group, I am just not set up for crafts.

**my parents know this when they sign up**

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Crafts are FUN! Yes, they're beneficial! And the parents love getting their littles' projects when I send them home. They're very beneficial for fine motor skills, prewriting skills, learning colors and shapes and textures, learning about different artistic styles, etc, etc. I actually push the artistic/creative side in my kids because so much of it is being taken out of public schools.

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I'm kind of shocked at the number of people here who don't do crafts and/or art or rarely do art. I just thought it would be a natural part of everyone's program. I guess not!

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from the sound of it, almost everyone has said that they do art. We do lots of art...gluing, cutting, painting, play doh, etc.
I just put materials out and the table and thats it.

It sounds like people are split on the crafts.

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I tend to shy away from those types of crafts because of the reasons you mentioned. I find that the kids enjoy, and get more out of craft time when I give them paper/crayons/paint/stickers/stamps, and let them create what they want.

I do some of the structured crafts because I think that's what the parents like best. I did one last week where all the kids did was allow me to paint their foot and press it on paper. I made it in to a snowman, added wording and decorations. The parents went ape s**t over it.

I guess some sort of happy medium where both parents and kids are happy is best.

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I agree that free art is incredibly beneficial. We have art supplies available all day every day for the children to use as they please. Although as playcare said, they end up in the bottom of bags. "Crafts" that are mainly teacher led, end up on the fridge. My parents LOVE 'crafts'. Art---not so much!

I try to make parent pleasers as 'free art' as possible. Eg I had the kids paint/decorate white butcher block paper however they wanted, and we are using that to wrap their parent gifts.

They helped me make cornstarch 'salt dough' ornaments. They kneaded and rolled it. One child wanted to paint his, another added beads before baking, one glued sequins on after baking, one wanted to color his dough. All requests were granted.

We did canvases, the kids picked the shape that they wanted to make, I taped it on the canvas, the child painted around it whatever colors they wanted, and we peeled off the shape (snowflakes, gingerbread boy/girl, Christmas trees, etc) and they looked AWESOME!

I did ONE handprint craft, but that was child requested (DS made a tshirt at school and the kids wanted to make one, too). Now they will wear them for the Christmas party and all be matching. I'm sure the parents will love it (and admittedly, they are cute)

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My children do mostly open-ended art projects, using materials that get rotated in and out every so often. They decide what they're making, how to make it, etc. Markers of varying types, glue, glue sticks, different types of crayons, chalk, water, tempera paints, water color paints, feathers, beads, glue, coffee filters, cotton balls, collage materials, pom poms, google eyes, a variety of sizes and shapes and colors of paper, recycled boxes, etc. etc.

However, we also do occasional craft projects, perfection not required
Often these are items that advance another purpose: Beads for beginning patterning, little cotton-ball birds in an egg carton nest to PLAY with when we learn about eggs and birds, rolled up paper candy canes because they're fun to pretend-lick Kids have major input into how to do these crafts, and I don't position their parts, except sometimes for the littlest toddlers who want to be included in the play, but don't want to finish the project.

So, for anyone who needs or wants a CRAFT, here is a fun one, if you can muddle through my directions. It's really simple once you understand:
1. Make a square piece of paper (there's a whole lesson for 3s and 4s there, in how to make a rectangle into a square or you can pre-prep that for them)
2. Color in a solid line, maybe 1/2" wide on average, on two adjacent sides (it looks like an L) My kids have used colors from pink to black They choose their own colors Don't color anywhere else on the page (that's the 'hard part' according to my kids.
3. Turn the paper upside down.
4. Look for the corner that is completely white (or whatever color your original paper is) by lifting each corner slightly.
4. Start rolling a tube, from that all-white corner. It often helps kids to roll around a marker, or a pencil.
5. Watch the candy cane form as they roll It's fun to watch their faces as the stripes appear.
6. Have a tiny piece of tape ready to fasten down the corner as soon as it's rolled up all the way. Then let the marker or pencil slide out of the tube (which is also worth a million laughs, to my kids )
7. Roll one end of the candy cane around a marker, pencil or your finger, to form the curve.
8. Ta-da!! Candy cane!!

My kids will make a million of them, for play, and 'decorations' Three and four year olds can do it on their own after you walk them through it.

It's a craft; it's sequencing; it's following instructions; it's a toy; it's a decoration; it's making choices, it's making predictions; it's learning colors for littler ones; but mostly it's just fun

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Agreed. I think most everyone here does art, it's product-oriented crafts that not everyone does. I have an entire room dedicated to creating art and there is almost always someone in the art area cutting, gluing, painting, etc. It's just crafts that I don't (usually) do.

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I do both open ended art and crafts. My parents love getting both. Through art they see how their child is practicing on their own drawing shapes/letters/figures, gluing, cutting,etc and how their child is progressing on a skill. Through the crafts they are also practicing the skills and in the end they made something recognizable. I give them the materials, and say we are making a ____, and give them the materials to create their project. We will have read books about the theme/subject during the week. I do not expect the craft to be perfect or for all the children's crafts to look the same. I love seeing the diversity on how each child interprets what their item will look like.

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I offer art everyday to children I interested. I do a craft per week to give the parents something for their fridge I usually do a book project a month (this month is the gingerbread man) where the pages are usually half art and half craft to tell the story. Parents and kids love the books.

My husband refers to the dc as my craft sweat shop though ...so there's that

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My kids do both, and I'm a huge craft lover....had my own booth at Cape Cod Crafters for yrs. and can still duplicate a craft from a photo. For that reason alone, with completing the finished craft project, viewed as perfection in order to sell it, would I have to say I don't believe crafts are the beneficial part as art is.
Thank goodness no one ever confined our great artist to crafts!
Although in this line of work, I believe it's better to provide both for necessary exposure.
I do crafts to teach the children how to understand teacher directed activities for future use in school, and to give the parents a finished product they can understand and put into perspective of what our day consist of. I do explain open ended art to parents, but they don't seem to understand the meaning behind it as easily.
I do arts to expose the children to unlimited boundaries of textures, colors, mediums, designs, patterns, etc. And encourage this by discovery and discussion of our natural world around us, and the help of books to guide us.

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I know crafts are thought of as parent pleasers but I also think dcks love to see their finished product, even if it only kinda a little bit looks like a reindeer or might be an angel if you tip it upside down and stand on one foot to look at it. Kids need to feel that pride in what they do and crafts offer one more way to do that. As far as the value, if I had to choose I'd certainly choose art for self expression and creativity any day but I offer both.

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