Benefits of Painting for Children

Painting for children is an activity many of us take for granted.

For some, it may even be seen as no more than a fun way to keep children busy for a couple of hours.

Despite this, it’s important to remember that painting is art regardless of age, and encouraging your children to paint can work wonders for their self-expression, self-esteem, coordination and even cognitive skills.

We’ve decided to breakdown the social, educational, and emotional benefits of painting for children, so get comfy, grab a cup of coffee and let’s take a look:

Social Benefits of Painting for Children

Fun

This is the most simple and perhaps most obvious benefit you’ll see listed here, but it’s one that shouldn’t be overlooked.

The act of creating a piece of art is engaging, fun and constructive for children, and seeing somebody’s impressed reaction when showing them the end result can be extremely encouraging and rewarding.

This can help develop a lifelong interest in being productive and creative, which is definitely something you want to encourage as early as possible.

Decision Making & Self Ownership

For many children, painting is one of their earliest experiences of managing their own project and making decisions that affect an outcome.

This helps them to develop critical thinking skills, autonomy and even responsibility, as they test things out, make choices, and figure out for themselves what works and what doesn’t.

Things like planning ahead which colours will be used where are also often our first exposure to resource management and prioritisation.

Art Helps Kids Bond and Make Social Connections

The beauty of art is that it provides all children with a level playing field.

Children of different races, ages, genders, nationalities and even languages can explore painting together, sharing ideas and designs.

Painting can even give children an outlet to share emotions, feelings and ideas with each other from an early age, learning valuable skills such as taking turns, sharing responsibility and of course, teamwork.

This isn’t just the case for relationships between children, however.

Studies have found that working on art together has hugely beneficial and therapeutic effects on the parent-child relationship too.

Educational Benefits of Painting for Children

Help Them Develop Their Creativity

Painting teaches children to think outside of the box, or simply be more open minded about how they can achieve their goals.

With some of the challenges humanity will be facing in the next few years and decades, this is absolutely something we need to be encouraging.

Lessons learnt while painting can be passed on to other forms of education and life in general, so don’t be afraid to get creative yourself and allow children to get messy - painting with things like sponges, toothbrushes and more will only serve to improve the enjoyment and lessons they pick up from the whole experience.

Aids Brain Development

Painting makes use of all of a child’s neural connections and provides a wide range of developmental benefits.

We use most of our senses while painting and since the left side of the brain focuses on logical and analytical processes while the right side works on creative and expressive processes, painting is an activity that keeps both sides of the brain stimulated and helps them to develop more effective neural pathways.

Activities that stimulate the brain in this manner are necessary to get a child’s brain growing and operating as efficiently as possible, allowing them to achieve their full potential later in life.

Contributes to Lifelong Appreciation of Art

If somebody grows up without engaging in art or having an interest in it, it’s very difficult at a later age to get them to appreciate it.

The more a child paints, the more they learn about how different techniques produce different feelings and results, which can feed directly into an appreciation and understanding of famous art and culture.

Helps to Associate Education with Fun

This one is probably quite self-explanatory, but painting is enjoyable and rewarding, which helps encourage children to enjoy learning about and developing other skills at school, while trying to master them and taking pride in the outcome.

This is super important in the early days because the failure to grab the attention and enthusiasm of children at this point can affect their entire school careers.

Scribbling with a paintbrush can also often be the first step to learning how to write, so it’s important for young children to have such an enjoyable and rewarding activity so that they can be emboldened and encouraged to keep learning and developing throughout life.

Patterns, Shapes, Sizes

Learning the names of basic shapes, patterns and colours are one of the most crucial early building blocks to our education.

It can be just as important to learn how these shapes fit together to create different images, or how colours can be mixed to create new ones.

This is fundamental knowledge that will be applied for the rest of our lives, and painting helps to make it interesting, exciting and memorable, giving children a huge boost in their early years.

Emotional Benefits of Painting for Children

Self Esteem and Confidence

Learning to paint gives children a skill they can take pride in.

Positive feedback on their work can help boost their confidence, not just when it comes to painting, but for whichever project they decide to take on next.

The beauty of painting is that there is no right or wrong answer, which means children are free to develop their own style without being discouraged or corrected.

Stress Relief

Painting has stress-relieving benefits, allowing children to focus on one objective and lose themselves in the small details.

The sense of achievement they get from completing a painting also helps to distract them from other anxieties or things they are less confident about.

There is a reason that painting is commonly used for therapy and not just for children - it works.

Self Expression and Communication

Children are learning new information and skills every single day, and painting gives them a safe outlet to explore their feelings and ideas.

Even if they grow up to be adults with no interest in painting, the skills picked up during these early stages will allow them to be comfortable with their own creative skills, and willing to try and learn new things whenever the opportunity arises.

Physical Benefits of Painting for Children

Hand-Eye Co-Ordination

From drawing lines to mixing colours or ripping paper, painting gives children a chance to develop their motor skills and coordination, something that will benefit almost everything else they do.

As children grow up and learn to write they will need more dexterity and accuracy than ever before, and art provides a gentle and enjoyable way to learn these skills for the first time.

Mobility Skills

Painting involves the delicate and precise use of the hand muscles, along with the elbows and wrists.

When this is combined with the other benefits listed above, it helps children to learn how to accurately and precisely manipulate their bodies, which can help them to develop further both mentally and physically, and even help them become more confident with things like sports or design technology as they grow older.

Brain Stimulation Helps with Development

Painting from a young age leads to improved mental health, more efficient neural pathways, and generally helps with mental development.

Studies have even found a direct improvement in the depression symptoms experienced by children going through chemotherapy as a result of the children being invited to an open painting session once per week.

As a result, it is an incredibly valuable lesson and hobby for any child and it’s recommended you paint with your child regularly, even before they hit school age.

That’s all for today, but we hope it’s clear to see now just how valuable painting is for children.

It is a fundamental part of their development and self-expression and should be encouraged whenever possible.

With our paint by numbers sets painting is much more fun and a lot more accessible as no special skills needed.

Paint by numbers technique brought millions of people throughout the world back to drawing. Join!    

We will bring more interesting and useful blog posts on a regular basis, so keep an eye on iPicasso!