Building crafts can be fun to help your child learn life skills. So many unique new toys and interactive activities are available to our children now! Not to mention the endless options on their electronic devices for hours of entertainment.
While our world may be moving away from old-school toys and crafts, don’t be so quick to dismiss traditional cut-and-paste activities you are familiar with from your childhood!
Life Skills
Here are ten fundamental life skills your child learns through completing a craft or hands-on project:
- Sequencing Skills: The ability to follow directions or steps in a specific order.
- Task Initiation & Task Persistence: The ability to start something and see it through to completion.
- Problem-Solving Skills: Solving situations like: “What if we run out of glue?” and “What happens if I make a mistake?”
- Fine Motor Skills: Learning to use scissors, grip a pencil or crayon, and draw shapes or letters. Engage hand muscles by squeezing glue bottles, folding paper, or using two hands together to assemble objects
- Sensory Exposure & Exploration: Experiencing sensations like sticky glue, scratchy paper, the sound of ripping a piece of tape or shaking the box of crayons, or the smell of paint
- Taking Turns & Sharing Materials: Learning to work with shared resources, whether working in parallel with your or completing the project with others
- Dealing with Disappointment: The ability to cope when something doesn’t turn out as planned, and feeling pride when work is accomplished!
- Cleaning Up: Taking responsibility for cleaning up materials when finished instead of leaving work for others.
- Language & Social Skills: Discussing the steps of the project, learning to ask for help, sharing the finished work with someone else, and the ability to describe it
- IT’S FUN! The skills taught through play are learned exponentially faster than when taught outside this fun environment.
