Kids love using their hands to paint and painting is definitely a kindergarten readiness learning and fun activity. Adults think of paints and crayons as tools for creating art. For kids, paints and crayons are more than that. They are tools for discovering and learning through play.
What are some of these learning and kindergarten readiness activities? Fine muscle control and eye-hand coordination. are the most obvious skills developed, helping little ones with writing tasks later on.
- Creating with paints and crayons is also a form of self-expression as kids explore what they like and don’t like. They explore their own ideas and exercise their imaginations.
- They are also building the understanding that images on paper have meaning; this is a basic concept for both reading and writing.
- As kids talk about what they are doing and practice words such as more, darker-lighter, bigger-smaller, and the vocabulary for shapes and colors, they are developing language skills.
- Kids discover that some colors mixed together make new ones for some science fun.
- Helping clean up afterwards and taking care of their crayons and paints also helps them learn to be responsible.
- As kids work and play, they are building their attention span, as well as focusing and concentration skills.
While painting kids experiment with boundaries. Their first attempts will probably be random patches of colors. Some children have a very difficult time stopping their work and end up with thick, brown puddles. But this is all part of the learning process and will help build kindergarten readiness. Can some painting time be included to keep little hands busy having fun and learning?