What is the first piece of art you can remember making? Can you remember the joy of your parents’ reaction when you showed it to them and then having it put up proudly on display? How about the first proper play you remember taking part in and your loved ones cheering you on? Or how many years later, you find that box full of all your old artworks and videos of plays kept from childhood and the nostalgia you felt seeing these after so many years?

Well, being able to create and have memories such as these are not the only reasons why children should be encouraged more than ever to learn art nowadays.

Below are 10 reasons to roll out the paper and gather some crayons to get to some crafting and creating!

1. Encourages Creativity and Exercises Their Imagination Your child’s imagination should have no limits. Arts and crafts help encourage children to be creative and explore their imagination. It also allows them the chance to express themselves in a fun and carefree way.

2. Develops Their Fine Motor Skills When younger children play an instrument or draw something with a crayon, the small movements required to do so all help to develop their fine motor skills.

3. Boosts Their Self-Confidence Art can help to increase a child’s self-confidence by making them feel great while they are in that creative zone. To get up on a stage and perform, for example, also not only gives children the chance to step outside their comfort zone but also allows them to see their progress and how much they have improved. Through this, their self-confidence will only grow.

4. Boosts Decision Making, Analytical, and Problem Solving Skills Children learn how to make choices and decisions through art by having to think about how to express a feeling through dance, how to act a particular character in a play, or when they need to decide on which color to use for the background of their drawing for example.

5. Improves Their Coordination Arts and crafts help children to develop and enhance their coordination by requiring them to frequently work with both hands and moving them in a particular manner. This helps to strengthen their bilateral coordination and their fine motor skills further too, which will help them in sports later on.

6. Improves Their Focus, Concentration, and Perseverance Doing something creative will mean that your children will need to focus their full attention and properly concentrate on what they are doing at that moment. As they persevere through learning a part in a play or painting, their focus will be improved. This helps to guide planned behavior and will no doubt lead to professional and academic success in their future.

7. Teaches Them Self-Expression The arts offer a great way to allow children to express themselves. As children feel comfortable experimenting and making mistakes, they will feel free to invent and think of new ways of doing things. This will then help them not just in the art room but in other aspects of their life too.

8. Develop Their Visual-Spatial Skills Especially concerning small children, drawing, sculpting or painting in art class all help to develop and improve on their visual-spatial skills. Through art and the identification of primary colors and objects, children’s visual processing capabilities are boosted.

9. Teaches Collaboration Being part of any group art activity will require that children work together and share the responsibility to achieve the common goal. They learn that their contribution to the project or band, for example, is key to its success – whether or not they are “in charge” or in a lead role

10. Flexible Activity For Them Arts and crafts activities can be done both on your child’s own and with the company of others. This means they can not only enjoy an activity whenever they feel like it but can also choose if they would like company or not. It can be both something they can entertain themselves with on their own, or have lots of great fun creating with others.

Any of these above reasons should be enough to convince you to start or to continue encouraging your children to do something creative. So why not grab some materials or listen to some music and start creating something with your child! You may well have the next Renoir or Astaire in the making!