Enriching Children’s Sensory Experiences and Creativity: Integration of Play and Art
Creating crafts and playing are activities that might just seem like fun pastimes for a child, but they actually play a huge factor in a child’s sensory experiences. This means that by encouraging these two playful activities, kids are actually able to enhance their senses along with their creativity. Therefore, as simple as play and art may be, they are an essential part of how a child’s creativity develops over time.
Why Are Play and Art so Important?
Allowing a child to play and create art is not only a way to enhance that child’s creative skills, but it can also help young children develop other important skills. Art allows children to express themselves and communicate visually. It can help them to find new ways to communicate ideas as well as problem-solve to figure out how to make the best art project possible. Art assignments allow students to have more uniqueness and creativity in their work. When creating artwork, there is usually not a right or wrong answer, so students are encouraged to think outside of the box instead of just completing a classroom task that only has one clear outcome.
Playing is important for children similarly to how art is. Play also helps children to learn to communicate by creating their own stories and dialogue, especially when they learn to play and interact with other kids. Playing gives children a chance to be independent and decide things for themselves instead of always being told what to do. Of course, playing is a fun pastime, but it can greatly help with a child’s development, just like art can.
How to Use These Aspects in Education
Art and play are more than just tasks for a kid to do in their free time or in an art-specific class. These skills can actually be integrated into everyday lessons in school. Teachers need to encourage creative assignments to help these skills improve. With art, you can encourage more visual assignments instead of uninteresting speaking or writing tasks. These visual assignments can consist of having children draw out diagrams or letting them create various images related to the lessons. Allow children to be creative with their schoolwork whenever possible.
For playing, teachers can use more games and encourage students to act things out. Play doesn’t just have to be for recess because as long as students are learning something from the activities, play can be integrated into the classroom. Use these fun and exciting assignments as a break from the core subjects to keep students engaged. Encourage them to get up and have fun with learning instead of just sitting around all day.
Conclusion
As important as education is to a young student, they won’t truly learn from it if they do not enjoy what they’re doing. Play and art are activities that are both fun and beneficial to a young student’s development. Whenever you get the chance, try to incorporate these two things into their lessons because it will help students to become more engaged and learn more life skills.