Your ELC shares the benefits drawing has on children’s development.
From emotional expression to developing pre-writing skills, your local early learning centre will take you through some of the benefits of drawing.
Drawing helps children express their emotions
Children don’t always have the words to express how they’re feeling. Drawing gives children another way to communicate their emotions and thoughts. Along with expressing their emotions, it gives children the opportunity to draw from their imagination and show it to their friends and family.
Drawing helps children develop problem-solving skills
When children start to draw more complex shapes and objects, they will need to solve problems like “what colour should I use here?”, “how should I join these body parts?” or “how do I draw a dog?” Answering these questions allows children to plan their drawings, such as the placement and pose of an object, and will form the foundations of problem-solving skills that will benefit them in school. To facilitate this thinking, you can give your child options with their drawing materials, such as coloured pencils or paper.
Drawing helps children improve their fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination
Fine motor skills are specialised movements that use the wrists, fingers and hands. Drawing helps develop this because it requires children to hold and manipulate writing utensils. Drawing also gives immediate, visual feedback that allows your child to improve their technique to get their desired result. If you want to learn more about fine motor skills, read our post Differences Between Fine and Gross Motor Skills
Drawing helps children improve their hand-eye coordination. It gives them the opportunity to form connections between what they see and do. As an activity, you can have your child draw an object they’re looking at.
Drawing helps children develop pre-writing skills
Along with fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination, writing has a few more requirements such as:
- Finger, hand, arm and shoulder strength
- Pencil grasp
- Interpreting and making sense of images
- Hand dominance
Drawing gives children the opportunity to experiment with pencil grasp and establish their dominant hand before they start learning to write.
How can you encourage your child to draw?
- Provide drawing utensils and make them readily available
- Draw with them and show that you like to draw too
- Encourage your child by showing interest in what they’re drawing. Comment on lines or shapes or colours and ask them why they did that
- Ask what they’re going to draw next. This will encourage your child to add more details to their artwork.
- Avoid controlling what they draw. Allow your little one to have the freedom to draw what they want.
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