Why DIY Crafting is the Perfect Educational Activity
Arts and crafts are fun activities that kids love, but they also help them develop essential skills as they grow.
If you’re a parent or educator, DIY crafting should be at the top of your list when looking for the perfect educational activity for kids. If you still have doubts, here are the numerous educational benefits of DIY crafting:
1. Helps with sensory development
Sensory development is the maturing of the five senses—sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Arts and crafts do more than help children develop fine motor skills and good hand-eye coordination. They play a huge role in sensory development by offering hands-on activities that engage multiple senses.
When crafting, children hold and manipulate various materials, such as clay, slime, candle wax, fabric, beads, and more. This enhances their tactile senses to enable them to detect different textures and qualities simply by touch.
Children also encounter different colours, shapes, and patterns in craft projects. This encourages visual discrimination, enhancing their ability to perceive and differentiate elements.
Craft project environments aren’t silent. Sounds fill the air—from the tearing of paper to the clinking of scissors or the squishing of materials. These help develop children’s auditory awareness. The distinct smell of materials used in craft projects introduces children to different scents, enriching their olfactory senses.
2. Enhances creativity and imagination
Creativity is about thinking, imagining, exploring, and discovering. Crafting invites children to explore their creative potential and provides an open canvas for self-expression. There is usually no single right way to create when crafting.
The young crafters experiment with different materials and ideas. As they express their thoughts freely, they are encouraged to think outside the box, and this stimulates their imagination and expands their creative thinking.
3. Teaches problem-solving skills
Problem-solving is the ability to identify problems, brainstorm, and find an effective solution. Crafting projects teach children how to do this because they present challenges that require evaluation and creative solutions.
When children engage in crafting, they often face challenges, from materials not sticking to designs not working as planned or a structure collapsing. When these happen, they must analyse the problem and brainstorm alternative solutions.
Crafting also encourages a trial-and-error approach that teaches problem-solving. When a child tries something that doesn’t work, they learn to analyse what went wrong. This helps them understand the problem or at least know to use another method when retrying. The trial-and-error method can also foster resilience.
4. Boosts cognitive skills
Cognitive skills are the skills of the mind—the functions the brain uses to pay attention, think, process information, and remember things. Crafting helps children develop these skills, which are essential for success and social prosperity in the modern world.
In addition, it helps children develop critical thinking skills. Assessing materials and techniques for their craft requires serious thought, which helps their analytical abilities.
Crafting improves memory by requiring children to remember specific steps. When engaging in crafting, children need to recall instructions and sequences. This helps them develop the ability to hold information, improving their working memory.
Crafting also helps concentration and focus. As you know, completing a craft project requires sustained attention and focus. This improves the child’s ability to concentrate on tasks.
5. Improves self-expression and self-esteem
Crafting helps children express their thoughts and ideas visually. More importantly, it builds their self-esteem by enhancing their overall sense of personal value and self-worth.
When crafting, children use their instincts and choices to create something from start to finish. This personal accomplishment can boost self-esteem. Also, when their creation receives positive feedback from adults, they are more confident in their creative decisions and abilities.
Remember that crafting presents challenges that kids have to overcome. Overcoming these challenges leads to a sense of achievement, contributing to a positive self-image.
6. Improves children’s mental health
Crafting is an excellent way for children to develop mental toughness, helping them become better equipped to handle stressful situations as they grow older.
Wondering how seemingly insignificant craft projects help with something as significant as mental health?
One way it does this is by providing the children an outlet to express their emotions and have fun. Also, craft activities promote mindfulness. Since crafting requires concentration and focus, children will be lost in the moment when crafting. This mindfulness distracts from whatever is stressing them, providing a calming effect that reduces anxiety.
Yet another way crafting helps mental health is by fostering a sense of achievement. When children complete craft projects and create something, they feel a sense of accomplishment, which gives them confidence and boosts their mental well-being.
7. Fosters social skills and teamwor
When crafting projects involves people working together, they encourage communication and collaboration. In group tasks, children must work together and find common ground to complete their projects. This teaches them how to cooperate, and cooperating on projects requires sharing ideas. It also teaches the children how to articulate their thoughts and intentions, helping them develop active listening and effective communication skills.
Since disagreements are inevitable when people are brought together, collaborative crafting projects often lead to disagreements and differing opinions. As the children overcome these, they learn how to resolve conflicts and find mutually agreeable solutions. These essential skills will help them become successful in their personal and professional collaborations.
8. Encourages planning and organisation
Crafting helps children develop several planning and organisational skills that they can apply to various academic and personal endeavours.
You must be wondering how playful, unstructured crafting moments and often messy end products encourage planning and organisation. It results from the preparation, goal setting, step-by-step execution, and plan revisions that come with crafting.
Crafting starts with planning, as the children often need to use their young minds to sort out their art supplies and other materials and decide on an approach. Then, they have to set specific goals to help them achieve their project.
For example, when a child has to design a birthday card, they may set objectives such as adding a personal message and incorporating specific decorative elements. These objectives will help them focus on what they want to accomplish.
In addition, children often need to follow a sequence of steps to complete crafting projects. This can help them understand logical sequencing.
9. Builds patience and perseverance skills
Many crafting activities require time and effort to complete. As children work on craft projects, they learn that good things take time. Importantly, they learn to stay committed to their tasks to see good results.
Crafting often involves making mistakes. They often do not get it right the first time or the second. But going through the cycle of trying, failing, adjusting their approach, and trying again, they may get it. This can teach them that failing is part of the process and that they can achieve the desired result if they do not give up.
This understanding helps them to be more patient with themselves and to approach challenges with a more resilient mindset.
10. Teaches maths skills
People do not usually associate craft activities with mathematics. However, there is a strong link between creative activities and mathematical understanding, so DIY craft projects can help children develop basic mathematics skills.
Many craft projects require measuring materials. This teaches children to use rulers, tape rules, and other measuring tools, and this helps them understand math concepts like length, height, and width.
Projects that require counting materials can strengthen counting skills and help children understand quantities and math operations like addition and subtraction.
Many craft projects also involve identifying and creating certain patterns, and this activity can give children a better understanding of geometric concepts and the relationship between shapes.
Best DIY educational crafting activities for children
Now that you’ve seen how crafting is perfect for a child’s development, here are the top DIY educational crafting activities for children:
Recreating meals with slime cooking kits
Slime cooking kits offer children a fun and imaginative way to recreate their favourite meals.
Crafting with slime cooking kits involves using slime and play ingredients to mimic the cooking process. Like actual cooking, the kids mix various ingredients and follow a recipe to create something that looks like a specific food. The slime even comes beautifully scented
A DIY slime cooking craft activity is not just fun; it is also educational and offers the following benefits:
- Teaches scientific concepts: As they mix and knead the slime, kids get to explore basic chemistry concepts like states of matter and reactions.
- Teaches problem-solving: If the slime’s texture or colour doesn’t come out well, the kids will assess the situation and consider adjusting their methods.
- Helps with sensory development: Slime cooking is a hands-on multisensory experience. The squishy, stretchy slime enhances their tactile senses, and colour change in the slime as they add ingredients helps them develop visual discrimination.
- Helps with cultural discovery: Méli&Mélo slime cooking kits allow kids to explore an important part of other cultures around the world. Whether recreating Italian Pizza, French Desserts, or Japanese Sushi, kids can learn about what makes these foods unique as well as their cultural significance.
Get the best slime cooking kits from Méli&Mélo. Our kits will help you make popular dishes like burgers, pizza, French desserts, and Japanese food without hassle. Unlike many products in the market, our slime is recyclable and meets the world’s highest safety standards for slime products.
Candle-making with candle DIY kits
Candle DIY kits allow you to make exciting scented candles. Candle-making with these kits is a fun and creative project that gives children the satisfaction of creating something visually appealing and practical.
It’s an educational crafting activity that teaches children important skills, such as:
- Builds creativity and problem-solving: Kids can express themselves by customising the cake with colours and decorations. They can assess the situation and make adjustments if something does not look right.
- Teaches scientific concepts: Kids learn about the effect of heat on matter as the wax melts when heated and solidifies again after cooling.
- Helps sensory development: The tactile experience of pouring wax and molding candles helps children explore different textures and weights. Watching the transformation of the liquid wax to solid candles helps them understand cause and effect. The use of scents can also help them experience and differentiate various fragrances.
Check out Méli&Mélo for the best DIY candle kits. We provide a small bag of soy wax and a bag of toppings (e.g., strawberries, happy birthday sign, etc.) for decorations.
Jewellery making
Jewellery-making is a popular DIY craft that involves creating bracelets, necklaces, and other decorative items worn for personal adornments.
Jewellery-making is an enriching activity for children of all ages. It offers a creative outlet for them to express themselves, and it is an educational craft that teaches many practical skills, such as:
- Enhances fine motor skills: Jewellery-making usually involves threading small beads with wires, which is an activity that improves dexterity and hand-eye coordination.
- Enhances creativity: Kids can combine various sizes and colours of beads to create different, unique designs. This allows their creative expression and artistic thinking to shine.
- Encourages planning and organisation: Since various outcomes are possible from different combinations of materials, kids learn to plan their projects. They decide on the materials to use and the sequence of assembly, improving their planning and organisation skills.
- Helps in the development of patience and focus: Threading beads to make jewellery takes time and requires concentration. This helps children develop patience and focus.
- Teaches maths skills: Jewellery-making projects require measuring lengths of wire and counting beads. This teaches children basic maths concepts like addition and measurement.
Check out our jewellery-making kits. We have a wide range of bead selections (from Japanese kawaii to beach holidays) with vibrant colours. We make sure you create the best jewellery possible by providing pre-design tutorials (such as bead selection for amazing designer-like accessories).
Takeaway: Foster creativity and critical thinking in children with Méli&Mélo crafts kits
Kids love hands-on activities like crafting. They are educational activities that help children build fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, problem-solving skills, cognitive skills, social skills, patience, and more. So, if you want to create fun moments for kids while simultaneously helping their development, you can’t go wrong with DIY crafting.
Méli&Mélo empowers creativity by delivering high-quality craft kits for all ages. From slime-cooking kits to candle-making kits and jewellery-making kits, our kits meet the highest quality and safety standards.
Ready to create fun experiences for your kids and help them unleash their imagination? Get the best-selling Méli&Mélo craft kits today!