Creativity For Kids – Art at Home Makes Kids Creative Plus Adds Many Other Skills

Creativity for kids – one of the most important skills that a child needs in this generation. It is the creative people in life today that are successful and creativity begins to be nurtured in the young years. When it is not nurtured what we get are cookie cutter, robotic adults who cannot think for themselves. If we want our children to be creative adults than we need to start thinking about their creativity at the earliest stages in their preschool years.

College applications (though that seems so far way) are replete with questions that pertain to creativity and it is one of the main attributes that they are looking for to fill their hallowed halls. It shows that these young adults know how to think for themselves and will be a welcome addition to their institution. Sounds crazy to be talking about college when your child is still so young, but its like talking about the foundation of a building in order to talk about the upper floors. If the foundation is not strong the upper floors wont last too long will they?

It’s probably not too early for many of you to be thinking about college because I remember as a preschool director many years ago the first thing a parent said to me when registering her 3 yr old was “He’s going to an Ivy League college.” She may have been thinking about where she wanted to send him but was she thinking about how she wanted to get him there.

I would sooner she be thinking about how she can give her child the best preschool experiences that can give him the best tools he will need to succeed in life rather than what type of college he will be going to (which will then help him in that regard anyway).

The truth is that there are many ways to encourage creativity in young children but the one that I am most passionate about is ART for children. What people don’t realize is that there are so many more benefits to having your children do good art than just bringing out their creativity. Many automatically think that all art is good for is creativity and don’t get me wrong that is crucial but it is not the only benefit and and I would like to share just a few of the benefits with you.

Art for kids as I see it is an absolute necessity. Even though it is an activity that is part of a good preschool program and you may think the kids have enough o fit in school that is not true. First of all they may be in a traditional school that only does arts and crafts. Or else there school does not do enough for them. It is a wonderful addition to any home activity and will even help pull your kids away from the T.V. and computer if you make it exciting enough.

Note when I say art for kids I mean ART and not crafts.

If you’re looking for real creativity for kids you’ll stick with art not the cookie cutter arts and crafts that turn your child into a cookie cutter robot. So to give you some of the benefits a good art program (which can be done at home) I am going to list only three right now.

• Physical benefits
• Emotional benefits
• Intellectual benefits(otherwise known as cognitive)

Physical benefits:

The children gain control over their large and small muscles by using paintbrushes, cutting, gluing and moving their large and small muscles enough to help build up real muscles. If they do it often enough their muscles really do get stronger. Look at the body builders and ask them how their muscle look the way they do.

Emotional:

Art helps kids express their feeling in acceptable ways. Would you rather your child use his younger sister as a punching bag or use some good wet grey clay instead? Art also helps sad kids get out some of their feeling so that they can deal with it in an acceptable non frightening manner. I once had a little student who had a fire in her home one day and for weeks she drew and painted about it until she was able to calm down a bit.

Intellectually

While doing art there are many opportunities for counting sorting, classifying,direction following, and decision making. Aside from all of the benefits and the creative juices that start flowing from doing art I would say its also SO MUCH FUN and would strongly make art in your home a very strong part of building your child’s creativity.