Celebrate National Craft Month with HIPPY Halton!

Do you often wonder, as parents, why we spend so much time doing crafts with our toddlers and preschool-aged children?

Throughout the month, we will be delving deeper into the advantages of crafts and sharing many activities! Make sure to check back each week to learn more!

Here are just a few ways that crafts can be beneficial for your little one:

1. Crafts help develop fine motor skills

2. Spend quality time with parents and siblings

3. It supports a creative mindset

4. Crafting can help build self-esteem and independence

5. Improves pattern recognition, counting, and problem-solving skills.

6. Crats nurture essential literacy skills!

Developing Fine Motor Skills with Crafts

As our children use their fingers to cut, colour, glue and cut, they are using the small muscles in their hands, wrists, and fingers and developing their fine motor skills.

Fine motor skills build independence! Children quickly build skills like:

• Holding a toothbrush and brushing their teeth

• Controlling a fork and spoon and feeding themselves

• Buttoning a button on a shirt or zipping and unzipping their coat

• Putting their shoes on

• Manipulating small items with fingers

• Using scissors to cut purposefully

• Stacking small items with precision

• Holding a pencil, crayon or small item with the fingers

• Drawing and writing

These essential fine motor skills are also needed to learn to write! This sets them up for success when they are ready to join the kindergarten classroom.

Try these awesome crafts to nurture fine motor skills:

1. Coming up on March 8th is the Hindu celebration of Holi!

Celebrate love and friendship and learn more about the Festival of Colors with this wonderful read-aloud story from author Surishtha Sehgal and then use lots and lots of colour to draw a picture of your family!

2. We love this colourful craft by Messy Little Monster! This rainbow threading craft is a yummy and entertaining craft that the kids will enjoy making. As they thread the cereal onto the string, children will improve their fine motor skills and build hand strength.

3. There are so many fun ways for your child to work on their fine motor skills with only a few simple items that you may already have lying about the house.

These chaos and clutter button stacking activities are simple and fantastic activities that keep your little one busy while they are learning and growing!

Stay tuned next week as we talk about 5 Ways to Nurture Your Child's Creative Mindset with Crafts!