Boost Your Child’s Brain Power with Art

As wonderful as art is on its own merit, as a creative and beautiful activity to be explored and enjoyed by all ages, it’s also important to remember that art practice and education can play a pivotal role in a child’s development.

By practicing and creating art, children can develop a myriad of skills, such as problem-solving and critical thinking, and by studying art they can even begin to learn visually.

In this post we’re going to look at some of the main ways that learning through art can help your child develop key skills and abilities that will carry over and help them across their future academic and personal development.

Create Neural Connections

Because art is not only a tactile activity but also one that can employ all of the key senses depending on the medium, it provides an abundance of sensory input.

This means that children’s brain synapses are firing away processing and decoding information, even when it comes to simpler activities such as finger painting, colour and material mixing, or even just the act of creating something entirely from their imagination.

Build Fine Motor Skills

Because art is a physical activity that draws on dexterity and motor skills, including gripping a paintbrush to paint, drawing and sketching with pencils, mixing a colour palette, using sculpting materials, and much more, children will find themselves naturally through repetition, working on their hand/eye coordination and motor skills.

Develop Problem-Solving Abilities

It may not be what you traditionally think of when it comes to “problem solving’’ but art can be a great way of beginning to build the ability to think rationally and creatively find solutions. Without even realizing it, many who do art are consistently being challenged to solve problems.

As an open-ended and process oriented activity, creating art is a constant flow of making decisions about the right tool, the right colour, the right way of representing something, and one where lateral thinking is rewarded as much as linear choices.

This will help encourage children to become more comfortable with making flexible choices, with being able to make decisions when the answer isn’t necessarily presented for them, and with being able to learn and evaluate the choices they’ve made. All this helps develop skills in reasoning and understanding, developing important pathways and critical thinking skills.

Promotes Healthy Emotional Development

Being able to understand and process their emotions is a hugely important developmental stage, and one art can play a key role in assisting. Even for adults, art can be an amazing way of sorting through their feelings and emotions in a healthy way, and this is also true for children of all ages.

Not only this, art can help develop a wide range of parasocial skills, giving children a sense of identity and purposes, as well as helping them form connections with other children their own age.

And as a final boon — art can be an amazing way of helping reduce anxiety and stress. Whilst these may seem like adult terms, it’s absolutely true that children need relief, calm, and a way to unwind as much as we do, and art is one of the best ways of providing exactly that.

But art isn’t just a great way of helping your children to grow and learn — it’s also a lot of fun! All of our classes are about putting the children’s experience and enjoyment first, letting them explore the world of art on their terms. And they all fill up fast! So be sure to book a place soon if you’re interested in one of the upcoming classes.