Importance of Arts and Crafts in Early Childhood Education

What does your child learn in JMS Early Years? Well they learn the basic skills they need for education in Primary and Secondary, and Arts and Crafts play a pivotal role in preparing students for this. Let’s look at how Early Years uses Arts and Crafts to help your child grow as well as how JMS Early Years applies this in their pedagogy.

Improving Cognitive Development

Arts and Crafts are not only fun but they make you think. When our students make something, they are given instructions by the teacher, which they have to comprehend and follow. This helps our students acquire new vocabulary, as well as practicing their listening skills. Students also have the chance to practice their problem solving skills, once the students get the instructions or see the finished image, they see what they already have, then determine what they need, then finally how to put it together.

Assisting in the Refinement of Fine Motor Skills

Young Children need to learn how to manipulate small objects, such as holding a pencil, doing up and undoing buttons, also known as fine motor skills; arts and crafts help develop this skill. Arts and Crafts do this by having lots of work with hands, kids have to hold on to paper, draw, cut, glue, among many more. Additionally, children develop their in-hand manipulation skills, the ability to move something in their hands without dropping it; as well as bilateral coordination, which is the ability to do two separate things with both hands to complete a single action, an example of this would be holding paper while cutting.

Social Emotional Development

Finally Young Children also need to continue their social and emotional development, and as always arts and crafts play a role. Arts and Crafts is an opportunity to develop essential skills such as, turn taking, sharing, working with others, patience, effort and grit. Through these activities children are encouraged to use their imagination and be confident in their ideas. Children also learn that sometimes things don’t work out the way we want them to, and that often they need a few tries at something before it becomes perfect.

How does JMS implement this in the Early Years Program?

Jakarta Multicultural School is a friendly and respected international school in Cirendeu, near Jakarta. JMS is able to guide your child through their learning journey from 3 years old all the way to their year 12 graduation and preparing for university land beyond. JMS Early Years is the beginning of that journey, and we at JMS utilise the latest pedagogical methods to make our classes as effective as possible,

As mentioned above Arts and Crafts is an effective early childhood educational tool, and JMS Early Years takes advantage of this method within its classes. JMS Early Years students do various activities including but not limited to; colouring, stick puppet creation, and tangram pictures.

In conclusion Arts and Crafts are incredibly useful for Early Childhood education as it assists in improving cognitive, fine motor skill and social emotional development, and JMS Early Years effectively utilises this method in classes.

Bibliography

Sadovsky. H. “How Crafts and Art Supplies Help Children Through Crative Learning”, Ooly, Arts and Crafts, www.ooly.com/blogs/blog/crafts-art-supplies-help-children-through-creative-learning#:~:text=1)%20Cognitive%20Development,versus%20the%20ones%20they%20need

Miss Julie, “6 reasons why art and crafts are so important for child development”, Activity Box, activity-box.com/learning-hub/6-reasons-why-art-and-crafts-are-so-important-for-child-development?srsltid=AfmBOooFJkeWT5-DX2iEpyRNKrjrf3erBz_GRFJyh9Khp8ayzl_qxRtE

“Learning Through Arts and Crafts”, Care for Kindies, www.careforkindies.com.au/blog/learning-through-arts-and-crafts

Davey. T, “The Importance of Art in Early Years Education”, Evoke Early Learning, evokeearlylearning.com.au/the-importance-of-art-in-early-years-education/

https://theeducationhub.org.nz/an-introduction-to-the-visual-arts-in-early-childhood-education/