Sadly, many schools have pushed away arts and creativity for common core subjects. Your child may not be getting all of the creative stimulation that they need in school, that is why it is so important to encourage creativity at home. Imaginative play improves brain function, motor skills, language development, and many more skills that will only foster learning.
Motor Skills
When a child holds scissors or scribbles with a crayon they are developing fine motor skills. Children should begin practicing these skills early. In the beginning it may look like just scribbles, but those scribbles are the key to learning how to write. Your child mimics what you do with a pen and later mimics the lines and shapes you make to form letters and words.
Language Development
One way to engage with our younger children over break is to talk about shapes, colors, or what a picture looks like. By doing so, the repetition will help them learn the concepts. Listening to parents describe what something looks like helps them to build deeper level thinking and language skills. Have elementary school children draw sentimental pictures of what they remember from the holidays past, make them into stories to share with your family over the holidays. For older kids, encourage them to explore art work and describe how it makes them feel.
Visual Learning
Learning by doing and making takes cognitive abilities to a whole different level. Children are much more graphic learners than we sometimes think. They can recognize a loved ones face even as a tiny baby, long before they can say any words. Drawing, sculpting, creating helps to reinforce this visual learning. As children grow, visual stimulation can help them remember concepts better. Writing notes in a colored coded organized manner is an example.
Social Outlet
Creativity and art allow one to express their inner beings. They create with no limits or bounds and make a world that is all their own. Sometimes it’s hard for kids to express their emotions, so art serves as mechanism for delivery. Kids can explode onto paper in a way that they couldn’t verbally.
Innovative Thinking
The more kids are encouraged to express themselves creatively, the more they think critically about the world around them. Art allows their own interpretation of the world- not what someone else tells them to think. It allows children the freedom to think and be who they are, which in turns encourages to come up with new innovative ideas.
Let’s Create
So much of a child’s life is dictated by others’ schedules, thoughts, and ideas. Art allows for an escape from the cookie cutter world. We love OOLY and all of their products that allow kids to creative a hodgepodge of rainbows to immaculately detailed pictures that tell stories of the child’s life or imagination. Art allows for the free flow of ideas, the zoning out and decompression from the everyday world to a world all of their own.
Gift Giving
Now, that we’ve established that creativity and the free flow of artistic ideas is good for the mind, body and soul, let’s talk about Holiday gift ideas. Kids of all ages love to create and make something their own. OOLY products are creative, innovative, and fun. They encourage users to “create their own happy.” Below you will find a gift guide to inspire a budding artist to a fickle teen and everything in between.
Preschool:
For these guys it is less about being bored and more about being entertained. Just a few minutes to send an email or eat something- anything. We suggest some different medians- washable markers, watercolors, crayons combined with the tools they need to create, brushes and double pads. Perfection.
School Aged:
These kiddos having finally gotten in the groove of school and now throw in a few weeks off just to shake things up. Entering these great minds has never been easier. These are not your everyday arts and crafts, OOLY offers things like 3D inflatable colorables and D.I.Y. Eraser Kits. Chunkies Paint Sticks and Chalk-o-Rama Crayons are less messy thank their alternatives. Finally, Ice Cream Scented marker- pass the paper let’s get creating!
Teen:
Some say teens are hard to please, well those teens haven’t met OOLY . They will love writing ornate notes with glitter gel pens or rainbow doodlers. Long hours at home with family can be filled with coloring using the triangle colored pencils, twisty stix oil pastels, or color changing markers. Many teens will have some kind of work to do over the break- Ombre pencils and 2-in-1 flip notebooks are perfect for just that.
Oh my Ombre! Mechanical Pencils
Lil’ Poster Paint Pods- Glitter and Neon
Adult:
To-do list, to-get list, to-make-a-list list, you name it there is a list for it. OOLY allows adults to have fun with their list making, calendar organizing, and planning. They’ve got fun gel pens, bright writers, and fountain pens that add some pizazz to the mundane. Mini journals that you can easily throw in your laptop or diaper bag for list making. And some fun stationary kits for sending “I miss you” or “thank you” notes.
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Sources: PBS
Photography Credit: Ashley W.
