The sight of your child working on an arts and crafts project is more than smile-inducing. Encouraging craft projects benefit the young one’s cognitive and overall development in numerous ways, all of which help them later in life. Learn about these benefits here before heading to your local toy shop to stock up on crafting supplies.

4 Child Development Benefits Arts & Crafts Provide

1. Promotes Creativity & Self-Expression

Give your child the opportunity to create works of self-expression and enter new worlds of imagination. They’ll learn what they like and don’t like to do, see improvements, and get increasingly creative. Perhaps your little one loves crafting crowns encrusted with glitter, beads, and faux gems, or spends hours pouring over books to recreate favorite images on paper.

Arts and crafts stimulate the brain to help children learn more about the world around them, including different cultures. Exposure to different cultures not only broadens your child’s mind, but it also helps them learn why diversity is so important and special.

2. Improves Motor Skills

Use arts and crafts to work on your child’s motor skills. Whether they use a marker to trace patterns or draw new ones, build castles and other structures with foam blocks, write in different fonts, work with scissors, or do anything else requiring hand-eye coordination, their motor skills will improve.

3. Promotes Language Development

Provide crafting materials to increase your child’s language skills. Your young one will learn the names for different supplies, as well as colors, shapes, and designs. Language development also improves when your child discusses their latest work, such as explaining why a pink elephant is sitting on the moon or how different-colored tissue paper was necessary to craft a diorama. 

4. Helps With Decision-Making

Enjoy watching your child make decisions about art projects, such as which crayons to use and whether foam cutouts or fabric scraps are best. Decision-making skills can also help your child learn patience, such as deciding to use a slower-drying paint to produce the result they want. Self-regulation subsequently improves, as well. 

Find arts and crafts supplies to help your child thrive at Toy Box, the biggest local toy store in Westchester County, NY. A community staple for 40 years, this toy store offers free gift wrapping and parking in addition to the region’s largest toy and game selection. Call (914) 698-7110 today with questions or browse the inventory online.