Arts and Crafts is a great way to not only get into the school holiday spirit but to also build your child’s language. Simply look online for a visual sequence of instructions for your child to follow (or written if your child can read) and get all the crafty supplies you need.
Here are some tips to make the most out of your art and craft activity:
- Help your child learn sequencing instructions in the correct order. You can do this by mixing up the instructions and getting your child to put them in order.
- Learn about before and after concepts. You can ask your child “What do we need to do before….?” Or “What is after…?”
- Build their vocabulary by talking about what you are making. You can use describing words (e.g. soft, smooth, hard, bumpy, glittery, sparkling, round) and location words (e.g. under, on, in, bottom, top)
- Learn to follow instructions with varying complexity. You might give them a simple instruction like “Put the pom pom on the tree” or something more complicated like “Put the biggest red pom pom at the bottom of the tree”.
Arts and crafts are also great for helping children stay on task and finish a task as they will need to do each step to get the final result. Cutting, drawing, gluing and sticking are also awesome ways to develop motor abilities and to learn actions words (i.e. verbs).
