Why art? Doest it matter?
The answer is definitely YES! Below I tried to gather all the skills that you can improve with art directly or indirectly:
FINE MOTOR SKILLS
Drawing helps to train the hand. At first to hold pencils and crayons better. Then, to be able to control and coordinate it better creating more and more conscious and detailed art works.
CRITICAL THINKING
Critical thinking is the skill to analyse and evaluate a problem in order to form a judgement. It helps children to stop and think before they act. As art teaches children to observe the world more closely, they need to slow down to do it so. While creating art, it takes time to consider different option, colours and make decisions. The process of observing and making decisions are the foundation of critical thinking.
DECISION MAKING
Everyone faced the dilemma of a blank piece of paper and no ideas at some point of their lives. But did you notice, the more you practise, the quicker the next though comes to mind? Art helps children to learn how to make a decision and run with it. It might not be the best idea at first, but eventually we learn from mistakes, correct them and come up with better solutions. This skill is valuable in every aspect of our life.
SELF EXPRESSION
Self expression in art helps to express ideas, feelings and thoughts through different mediums, without using words. It helps to explore feelings both verbally and nonverbally. Using visual language helps developing a deeper understanding of ourselves and our surroundings.
CONFIDENCE
The more you practise things, the better you get at them. Art is no exception! When you experience that you can do something for the first time, it automatically gives you confidence. That is a great feeling. The better you can do something, the better it makes you feel. This can do attitude will effect other areas of your life.
FOCUS
To be able to create great art one has to pay attention. You can't multitask! Once the children reach school age and start to look at each other’s work, they want to do better. Both to impress and gain acceptance. Art is a great way to teach you how to focus. Colouring in-between the lines, getting that small detail right. Children try again and again focusing harder and harder as they want to succeed.
CULTURAL AWARENESS
Art connects children with culture and a larger world, giving them a sense of belonging. The younger ones first experience of the world is via touch, taste and smell. Later, they start drawing things around them and start to pay attention to details by observing things. The more they see and experience, the more aware they become. They start noticing how people and object are different and by looking at art works from other cultures they learn the differences and similarities.
HAND-EYE COORDINATION
Hand - eye coordination is the skill to use muscles and vision in sync. Improving it helps children grasping objects, throwing, catching, playing sports, playing instruments while reading music, playing video games.
CREATIVITY
When a child is left to their own devices for entertainment they usually create an imaginary world. A box can be a spaceship or a stick a magic wand. Creating art is fostering this inventiveness and creativity even when children start growing and gradually stop playing. Having the ability to remain creative as adults has plenty of advantages in all areas of life.
PERSEVERANCE
Trying out new things doesn't work out all the time. Sometimes it doesn't turn out the expected way. Art teaches children, that they can try again and the result will be different. The more they try their work is visibly getting better, giving them instant satisfaction.
LANGUAGE SKILLS
At the beginning as they are creating art work, children learn the names of colours, materials and mediums. Later on, they start talking about their work, explaining what is on the picture. The older they are, the more critical they become and start to look at other's works and compare them.
COLLABOARTION
As children develop, they start to understand that there are other people around them with different point of views. While doing art and observing others children encounter with different views on the same subject. Art is not an individual activity. Young children love to play together and they love to create art together strengthening both their communication and social skills.
EXPERIMENTS
Experimenting with art teaches children to learn new things while having fun. They can experiment and try new things on their own. They can draw their own conclusions from their experiments, learning new things throughout the process. Finding out what works and what doesn't. Slowly they become more and more independent and less afraid to make mistakes, but to learn from them.
ACCOUNTABILITY
It is only your child who is responsible of his / her artwork. Of course, there is always help from an adult when needed, but all the decision-making is on your little one. We can model and demonstrate how to do things, but they have to do it on their own to learn. Also, if they made a mess, it is their job to help cleaning it up.
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
Recent studies show, that art is improving critical thinking, problem solving and creative thinking among other skills. Once learnt, children can use and adapt all these skills in other subjects and areas of their lives. Art helps with positive emotional development that leads stronger abilities to self-regulate.
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