Inspiring Children to Love Art

There are so many reasons why inspiring your child to love art will benefit them – they’ll experiment with design, self expression, and develop skills for school & life ♥

There are so many ways your child can focus on art activities as they grow:

• drawing on paper
• collecting leaves and twigs and sticking them on paper to make a collage
• painting with their fingers
• sticking pieces of coloured paper or sequins or coloured stones on a papier mache box.

The choices really are endless. But why is art important for your child’s development? What if they’re into building or boats or cars?

Art activities will help your child in the development of every aspect of their life – from refining their fine motor skills: to grasp pencils or a paint brush and draw shapes; scribble, fast, slow, light, heavy. These are the kinds of movements that are the precurser to writing and doing up their shoelaces, or hitting a nail into wood.

And it will help develop their imagination and freedom of expression: drawing what they want, in feather light swirls or dark pencil breaking marks helps children to express their feelings, their character, what they think.

If you talk to your child about their work it helps them learn to express verbally their thoughts, which will translate to expression throughout their lives. Further, it can provide new ways for children to approach their school projects as they grow.

Inspiring the artist in your child

Create a space where your child can do art when they like. Teach your child about the different resources – chalk, paint, pencils – and how to work with them so you don’t end up with paint up the walls.

A beautiful art smock from Little French Heart can help inspire the artist within but more so  it will protect little one’s clothing.

Talk about what they’re doing: ask them what they’re drawing or painting or sticking and why they’re doing it. Develop little stories together about the images or simply just listen. I think the art of listening to our children is something we need to be really mindful of – it’s so easy to be distracted.

And collect things. Keep them in a little Olli Ella Piki, and sort them for different activties: nature, buttons, bits of wool or material, string, they can all be used to create something you can’t yet even imagine.

Find children’s books about famous artists such as Monet or Van Gogh in libraries, books stores and art galleries. Often they have a section for children to copy art but they also explain in simple concepts the reasons why the artist painted what they did – or what inspired them. Your child may not really grasp who the person is but they will understand the language and world being opened up to them.

Take your child to an art gallery to understand what art can become. Pick out a painting and go home and using your own tools and resources recreate it.

Take art outside: walk in the garden, find gumnuts, sticks, leaves, flower petals. Return to your little art space and create collages. They may not last if the nature hasn’t been dried but it’s about the fun of the moment – exploring, creating, being together. Or see our gorgeous Flower Presses.

So ultimately, art will help with your child’s growth and development but perhaps more importantly, it can be simply a reason for you and your child to spend a focused moment together. And that’s more priceless than any Monet or Van Gogh 🙂