Art Skills, Life Skills

Kids are naturally creative, and there are so many developmental benefits of artmaking for kids: When they hold a pencil, use scissors, or fold paper, they’re building important fine motor skills. When they scribble or draw a story, they’re laying the foundations of reading, writing, and language. When they mix colors or experiment with new materials, they’re bringing science and engineering concepts to life. 

Artmaking can help build some “invisible” skills, too—such as skills that build resilience:

• Emotional Awareness. Creating art gives kids a way to reflect on and express their feelings. Art helps communicate complex ideas and can be a starting point for meaningful conversations. Making art with others can build social skills such as collaboration and compromise. 
• Problem Solving. Artmaking presents challenges, so it requires persistence, practice, and patience. In fact, you might think of each piece of art as its own “problem”—how will you bring an idea to life? Children will need to make choices: which materials, surface, colors? They may also need to try again and again to get it just the way they’d imagined it. 
• Confidence. As with other skills, the more kids create art, the more confident they’ll become. It feels good to take a project from start to finish.