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Joanne Sale - By Joanne Sale

Getting Crafty - Joanne Sale

You may be waiting to do art and craft projects with your children until they hit their toddler years when you’ll want to keep them occupied and out of trouble. However, doing simple art and craft activities with your baby when he is old enough to sit comfortably on his own can be highly beneficial to his fine motor skill development as well as a lot of fun for both of you!

Art and Crafts for Fine Motor Skills Development

As babies have short attention spans, it is important to keep any art and craft activities you do with them short and simple. However, these activities can be excellent ways to aid your babies to develop dexterity in their fingers and the use of the small muscles in their hands. According to their developmental age, babies should be able to practice using their fingers and hands to produce art and craft projects in the following ways:

6-12 months

Finger or sponge paintingSimple collage with a variety of textured materialsSpreading or sprinkling materials onto a pageManipulating simple objects to make prints on a pageTearing paper and sticking it on to another

12-18 months

Mixing materials and texturesCrayons and simple drawing (lines)Dipping and dabbingMaking strokes with a paintbrushPractice using objects to paint with rather than fingersSqueezing bottles to get out paintSticking shapes or forms onto a marked pageCrumbling, sprinkling or shaking material onto a pageMaking shapes out of handprints

18-24 months

Threading items with large hole onto a shoelace, pipecleaner or a piece of woolDrawing circlesColouring with crayons and drawing with chalkFreestyle drawing and painting followed by simple instructionsCreating collages out of recognisable shapes, photographs or stickersSpreading glue with a brushPressing down on an object to achieve a printShaking materials in a bag in order to soak or coat themDipping and dabbingSimple folding along a marked linePasting, Spreading and sticking materialsArt and Crafts for Sensory Development

When introducing art and craft activities to your baby, make it as fun as possible. Your child won’t really care about the end result at this point, that’s just something for you to keep! However, he will enjoy touching different textures and using different materials to create something new, especially if it gets really messy! By adding food items, household objects and a variety of textures to the materials you would usually use for art projects, you can aid your child’s sensory development. Here are some materials for you to try using when doing art and craft activities:

Textures and food based materials to work with:

Sugar, salt, flour, food colouring and glue, cotton wool, chocolate milk powder, coffee grains, rice, beans, pasta, paint, play doh, paper, cloth, felt, aluminium foil, sandpaper, sand, corrugated card, vegetables cut into shapes for printing, food colouring, Fruit Loops, Tang or Jello Powder, feathers, craft sticks, tissue paper, coloured string, chalk.

Everyday objects to use for creating artwork:

Sponges, brushes, shaving brushes, basting brushes, corks, toothbrushes, cotton buds, buttons, bottle tops and caps, empty squeezy bottles filled with paint, spray bottles, bubble wrap, cake icing tubes, pastry rollers, whisks, spoons, spray bottle, medicine droppers.

Once you have some ideas for art and craft activities and have thought about how to do the activity, just get started and have fun! The more often that you expose your baby to these kinds of experiences, the more he will enjoy them. And don’t worry if you make a big mess together, it will almost always wash off!