14 Arts and Crafts Projects for Toddlers (2024)

FAQs

How does arts and crafts help a child's development? ›

This activity engages children's sense of touch, sight, and sound, and helps develop their fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. This activity also encourages children to explore their creativity, imagination, and self-expression, which can boost their confidence and emotional well-being.

Have your 3-year-old cut up drinking straws, which make a satisfying snap when the scissors break through. Then, they can string yarn through the straw pieces to make an easy DIY bracelet. This craft relies heavily on fine motor skills and coordination—and your child will also learn patience and frustration tolerance.

As children draw, paint, and make collages, they are learning about their world (colors, shapes, and sizes of objects). When they use paints, glue, and markers, children are planning, trying out new things, and solving problems. As children mix paints, they learn to understand one thing can make changes in another.

Arts and crafts also fosters mental growth in children by providing opportunities for trying out new ideas, new ways of thinking and problem-solving. Art and craft activities give children a sense of achievement and allow them to take pride in their work which builds confidence.

Develops motor skills: Engaging in arts and crafts activities allow kids to use their hands and fingers extensively, thereby improving their fine motor skills. Simple actions like holding a paintbrush or colouring with crayons can help to improve their control and grip.

By age 3, many children are learning to better control their hand and wrist movements. They are making forms and objects that are almost, but not quite, recognizable to adults. Circles, lines and crosses are always popular forms. Some 3 and 4 year olds may begin naming their drawings.

The 13 arts of Zurich chusum are painting, carpentry, carving, sculpture, casting, blacksmith, bamboo and cane craft, gold and silver smithing, weaving, embroidery, masonry, leather works and paper making.

Art for toddlers helps children with their self-confidence as they take ownership of something they created on their own. Arts and crafts also help children learn problem solving and patience. When the young ones have to wait for paint or glue to dry in an art for toddlers activity, they get to practice patience.

How to teach a 2 year old art? ›

Draw With Crayons

While 1-year-olds thrive with finger painting, 2-year-olds have better fine motor skills and coordination. Dr. Phillips says this enables them to scribble and draw simple strokes with crayons. Consider offering different canvases besides paper such as cardboard, paper plates, or grooved wood.

Stage 2: Controlled Scribbling (2 years to 3 years)

Toddlers may make repeated marks on the page—open circles, diagonal, curved, horizontal, or vertical lines. Over time, children make the transition to holding the crayon or marker between their thumb and pointer finger.

Creative arts may also help children explore their emotions, both displaying and regulating them (Koster 2012). Theater and puppetry activities, for example, can help children explore their emotional range and, in play, develop emotional self-regulation and self-control.

Arts help children build physically and emotionally. Gymnastics and dance are two examples of how the arts build strength and flexibility in children. Activities like these can be critical in helping a child develop motor skills and an interest in physical fitness. Arts encourage creativity in children.

Participating in art can help young children learn about cooperation, collaboration, empathy, and emotional regulation. Art-related activities are fun for young children and are a good way to encourage creativity and assist with the development of fine motor skills and spatial awareness.

A child's creative activity can help teachers to learn more about what the child may be thinking or feeling. Creativity also fosters mental growth in children by providing opportunities for trying out new ideas, and new ways of thinking and problem-solving.