Have you seen how kids enjoy with colours? Painting might not be everyone’s forte, but it has immense benefits for your child and even you. Being with colours lets them explore their talent and find an expression to what they want to say. Don’t worry that they will mess it up and don’t know how to paint, just leave them with some colours and paints and see a number of benefits of doing so.
Firstly, painting helps children to use all of their senses and express their emotions. They touch and feel the colours and then create something of their own. You surely must have seen how happy your little one if when given some paints, brushes and a paper. Painting relaxes them as when both the sides of your child’s brain are engaged that time. W.Lambert Brittain, who is the author of Creativity, Art, and the Young Child says, “The child’s personality often shines through loud and clear when he or she draws or paints, for example, the little red-headed boy who drew red-haired boys in stripped T-shirts. No one doubted whom the drawings represented. Drawings by young children are typically egocentric.” Another author, Brittain says that “Art activities not only reflect a child’s inner self: they help form it.”
Let’s see some other great benefits of how painting helps in development of your child.
It helps your child to:
- Communicate their inner-most emotions or feelings without using any words
- Learn something new. Yes, it’s a learning opportunity which is fun too
- Gain hand-eye coordination. This coordination develops when they paint
- Express their feelings, thinking, ideas and knowledge
- Explore, and create something with new kinds of medium
- Experiment using various lines, shapes, colours, textures, forms and designs
- Learn to be creative without any boundations
- Develop mentally, emotionally and socially as well. How socially? It builds their self-confidence and teaches them to participate in group activities (if painting is done in a group)
- Develop mobility skills – They use their hand muscles, which in turn allows them to polish themselves mentally and also physically
- Painting helps children acquire skills on how to focus on trivial details, painting on a canvas or a piece of paper requires varied painting skills
- Build self-confidence – as children feel they can create on their own
- Enhance imagination and even solve problems when they goof up
- Discover their own creativity. They get to know about various colours and how colours are mixed and what is the outcome. They also learn about what looks good with what (combinations and contrasts)
- Develop the decision-making skills. Wondering how? They have to plan which colour to pick and use where. Encourage them to do that on their own. Final product doesn’t matter; here, the process is more important
- Develop their fine motor skills. For example, they grasp their pencil, crayons, paint brush. This in turn helps your little one in writing, buttoning her shirt and other tasks that need controlled movements
- Feel different emotions even their subtle feelings. It also helps them to improve their communication skills.
- Develop their cognitive skills like patterning and concept of process and outcome (cause and effect). For example, if I press the crayon harder, the colour is darker and pushing too hard can break it too
- Develop shape and Maths skills too. Kids learn to create and understand the concepts of size, shapes, comparisons, and even reasoning
- Bond and spend valuable time together with her friends and even with you
- Develop better language skills; when children talk about their artwork, they will develop good language skills. You must encourage by actively listening to your child and making her talk and explain.
- Enhance group and social skills by meeting with friends and doing activities like painting, finger printing together
So, you just saw some benefits of painting for your child. Colouring and painting is an important activity of your child’s development and well-being. It’s a good idea to take out some time to paint with your child. Believe it; it improves their growth and lots more.
