PHOTO BY: WWW.BUDDINGBEADS.COM
As instructors with Beading Buds (www.beadingbuds.com), a travelling jewelry making service that attends at children’s birthday parties, private school afterschool programs, summer camps and fundraising events to work with children and assist them in making beautiful one-of-a-kind jewelry, we have become experts in using beading to assist with a child’s development.
Beading helps pre-school children with their dressing skills and pencil grasp and control. Beading helps school aged children with math and problem solving skills, visual motor and perceptual skills and cognitive skills. The planning aspect of beading helps children of all ages with organization skills and completing a beading project provides a sense of accomplishment in finalizing a project that offers freedom of self-expression and togetherness with the other children at the party. This can contribute to increased self-esteem.
Beading promotes children’s’ development in the following four areas:
1) Visual Perceptual Skills:
Visual Discrimination, Scanning, Visual Memory: When making a pattern the child needs to use their visual memory to remember what bead to use next. By using visual discrimination and scanning all the different beads they can select the bead that they need next to continue their pattern.
Eye-Hand coordination: Threading beads onto a string involves coordination of the child’s hands, and requires their eyes and hands to work together.
PHOTO BY: WWW.BUDDINGBEADS.COM
2) Fine Motor Skills: Grasping: When children are selecting their beads, they use different sized beads, this causes them to use different grasps. When they use larger beads they use the “3-jaw chuck” grasp. This is great for preschool children because it helps them train the muscles that they will need in school to use a pencil. When children choose small beads they increase the strength and coordination in the small hand and finger muscles. Children also use these muscles when they pick up a bead and put it onto their beading tray and when they place it onto the beading wire to create their beading project.
3) Cognitive Skills: Planning and Math Skills: Children develop their planning and math skills by deciding what pattern they will create. How many beads will they need? How many beads of each colour, shape and size? How long should the beading project be?
4) Social Skills:
Beading Parties help children to interact with each other. The children find and trade beads with each other, this promotes sharing and cooperation. The children help each other with the design of the necklace, the first children to finish up assist the children that are a bit behind, this helps the children to work together as a team in a group setting.
Finally, beading is just plain FUN, and FUN is always good for kids! For more information on how to use beading to assist with your child’s development feel free to visit Beading Buds at www.beadingbuds.com.
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Even young people today know how to make beads . It makes easier since their is an educational value of beading for children. Awesome .