What are the benefits of clay modelling?

For children, clay modelling has numerous educational advantages. It helps them learn and build hand-eye coordination, motor skills, agility, creativity, and attention span. In addition, clay is a versatile material that can get shaped in many ways. For millennia, humans have been manufacturing pots, plates, bowls, sculptures, and other objects out of clay. Thus, clay modelling is a therapeutic pastime for children.

One of the essential advantages of clay modelling is its involvement in early childhood education. So, how to use clay craft to help your child learn and be more creative?

Clay modelling for kids

Place clay or play dough in the kid's craft items to discover how it inspires their creativity and imagination. Then, watch as they experiment with the clay's texture and doughy consistency, attempting to form it into fascinating shapes.

Benefits of playing with clay

• Hand-eye coordination is a neurological process in which the eye's visual input directs the hands through a task. Hand-eye coordination is needed for plenty of functions, such as catching a ball, writing, and pouring water into a glass. Furthermore, good hand-eye coordination might help your child's agility, athleticism, and penmanship. Clay games also help them engage their muscles, like hands and arms, during playtime.

• Everybody makes mistakes, particularly while learning something new. These errors can be discouraging at times, especially if they are challenging to correct, like dealing with a lump of clay, though your child can readily fix mistakes. Furthermore, when your youngster understands that clay modelling mistakes are not permanent, it is easier for them to learn and keep attempting new things.

• The development of hand and finger muscles are part of motor skills. Fine motor skills are like hand-eye coordination capabilities, but they do not require the involvement of eyers. For example, when practised by a proficient typist, typing is a fine motor skill without hand-eye coordination.

• Being creative is a skill that is highly prized nowadays. Using clay allows your child to express their imagination by creating different clay items to their liking. Moreover, since clay is so versatile, your youngster can experiment to create various objects with just a tiny amount of clay for kids.

• It encourages play-based learning. Children are still in charge and spontaneous in this, just as they would be in free play. Parents/educators, on the other hand, parents/educators can actively contribute by curating the environment so that the child may acquire the targeted lesson. This style of learning is called activity-based learning. Precisely why teachers keep clay as part of craft kits.

• Children get naturally enticed in experimenting with clay because it differs from other mediums like sketching. And, since clay is malleable, faults get fixed easily, preventing frustration amongst children. Besides, clay keeps your child engrossed for hours.