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The concept that kids crafts is, or should be beneficial for children is not a new one. Traditional educators have long touted the direction following and fine motor development skills that arts and crafts gives to children.

The bottom line is however, that these type of crafts have not been proven to be any good at teaching direction followng. As a matter of fact, crafts like this does great damage to children’s self esteem and other skills.

Many of us already know why we as parents and educators like to give children arts and crafts.

We are spending special time with our children doing things they love.
It gives the children an outlet for their creativity.
It keeps them engaged.
It gives teachers a way to have children remember things they learned.
Helps the kids connect with different holidays.

Believe it or not, there’s a great way of doing crafts that picks up the level a notch or two. It is a method of doing arts and crafts with children that raises their confidence and self-esteem, gives them thinking and problem solving skills and skyrockets their creativity.

I call this, Educational arts and crafts.

There are a few very basic underlying concepts about educational arts and crafts.

All adults working with children should be aware of what children are capable of at various ages and levels. 
Therfor, kids measuring sticks cannot be the same ones used by adults. Educators that know about child development know that kids do not reach adults understanding, so they don’t expect them to create like adults.
•    Having children copy an adult’s idea or model is not beneficial but detrimental for many reasons.

Good arts and crafts project should therefor, address the following points.

1.    The projects should help the children develop a good self-esteem.
2.Art or crafts are great venues for kids to use their thinking and problem solving skills.
3.    Choices should be available which leads to initiative taking.
4.    Freedom to decide HOW to decorate helps develop a sense of autonomy and independence.
5.    Creativity skyrockets when children decide what to create.

In Educational Arts and Crafts the children incorporate all of the above skills while traditional, copycat, arts and undermines the same.

The meaning of educational is not only fact accumulation and in this case, it certainly does not mean that kids are gathering fact while doing art. It means that they are receiving skills of tremendous educational benefit.

Children who do lots of copying adults crafts, end up feeling poorly about themselves and even more about their artistic abilities. They are usually the children who grow into the adults who feel “they cannot draw a straight line”.

They feel that there is no faith in them from the adults to make art on their own. Little by little their confidence gets ruined which is what happens if they are expected to only follow robotic adult directions.This all starts in the beiginning when giviing toddler crafts to young ones and continues on into the later years.

Below are some of the many terrific benefits inherent in educational art.

    Children feel great about themselves as they get to create their own projects.
The craft actually looks like something to the adult and the child.
Creativity is greatly sparked in the kids.
    Thinking, problem solving skills and initiative are used.
    Self-esteem and initiative are encouraged which spills over into other areas.

So why not get started in giving the children crafts that they do on their own, that are educational and stop giving your kids crafts that copy other adults work.You can check out some educational arts and crafts for kids in an e book form that closely follows this method.