4 Reasons To Look For A Child Care Program That Includes Art Education
Posted on: 18 November 2015
When shopping around for child care, choosing the best program requires you to look deeper than just the price and the qualifications of the caretakers. Whether your child is still an infant or almost old enough to stay home alone, care programs integrating art education can pay off years from now. Since your child is already spending hours a day at a daycare program, making sure that program includes art results in these four important benefits.
Better Motor Skills
It's true that active play and sports work well for encouraging gross motor skill development, but most of the fine motor skill training practices used by early childhood educators are a lot less fun for the child. Even basic finger painting and dough sculpting increases the strength of the fingers and hands, develops the gross and fine motor skills, and keeps the attention of the child because it's fun. It's also a lot easier for the child care workers to help a large group of students with art activities instead of trying to give each of them individualized attention for skill development.
Healthier Emotional Expressions
The most well-behaved six year old can still end up on the floor in a tantrum if the right thing goes wrong. Hands-on art projects like sculpting, building sand castles, and finger painting is particularly useful for encouraging children to find other ways to express their emotions in more appropriate ways, which is crucial when there are 30 or 40 kids sharing one room. Slapping paint covered palms on a canvas in frustration is a lot easier to clean up after than a fight between two or more kids.
Stronger Social Abilities
Art time is particularly important in the child care setting because it's the perfect tool for teaching cooperation and sharing. Everyone can get involved in setting up the art station and putting it away again, demonstrating the power of working together. Disagreements will naturally arise over limited art supplies, giving the caretakers plenty of chances for teaching conflict resolution skills to the children too.
Improved Critical Thinking Skills
It's never too early to encourage your child to think critically by observing the world around them and taking action based on their decisions. Art encourages these skills because children get to make decisions about colors, textures, and techniques. Learning the difference between the patterns produced by finger painting and using a brush as a toddler can result in an adult that is better at handling the challenges of their job.
Of course, it's a lot easier for child care programs to include art when parents volunteer to help. Offer to bring in some new inexpensive art supplies each week to help the program keep art time on the schedule. For more information, contact a child care facility like Kaye Kare Child Care Center.
Share