Art & Craft Brain Food

At Stork Gifts we love arts and crafts. It is always great fun to let your imagination run free and get covered in glue, paper and paint having fun with the kids.

Art can help children to improve their fine motor skills, hand eye coordination, dexterity, patience, and attention to detail. All of which are valuable skills to help your child get the best in the education system. But on top of all that they also are learning how to be creative, which is a valuable skill now linked to intelligence, problem solving and business success.

Sadly these skills are not always understood and nurtured in our increasingly test focused school system, so conducting arts and crafts with your kids yourself is teaching them important lessons they may otherwise miss out on.

One of the most important factors when partaking in arts and crafts together is the freedom of expression it offers.  There are no rules to creativity and every picture, painting or model offers a wide variety of discussion options.  There is no right and wrong, a pink cow is every bit as valid as a black and white one.

For younger children you can discuss form, colour and materials but equally you can discuss the story behind it or create a story for the project.  Link it together to build and develop the story further with reading, writing or storytelling.  For older children they can build on their skills and use a particular subject to increase their understanding and interest.

A nice thing about art, as a family activity, is that can “usually” be done with very little spend, preparation or stress.  Everyone can join in regardless of their ability and you can use just about anything.  Collect leaves on the walk home from school and use them to print with, cut into fun designs, sketch, make a collage from, trace, photograph or use in a model.

Paper mache is one of the best projects and is relatively inexpensive and simple to do.  You can keep your project as simple or complicated as you like.  It’s superb for using with other materials and teaches about technique, form and design.

Keep your activities age appropriate and prepare well when you can to make creative play so much fun you won’t even realize they are learning.

If you would like some inspiration to get crafty this summer visit our website and have a look at our craft kits and craft materials to keep children entertained for hours!

Some of our family handywork!!

Daddy took the project very seriously!

Dion, Aged 6 was free and vibrant in his design!

Ebonie, aged 9 chose a subject she loved.

Ethan, aged 8 experimented with various effects.

Jude, aged 2 was fond of the stencils & stamps.

Mum, age unknown, took the imaginative view.

Thai, aged 11 enjoyed adding character & humor.

Materials used... Djeco stencils, stamp set, gel pastels, farm stickers & Egmont pencils.  Time spent together as a family, a shocking 2 hours - we completely lost track of time!