Are crafts useful in learning?

Crafts are a FUN way to keep kids BUSY, but are they really useful in learning? A quick google search can answer this question, but I would like to share some of my thoughts and personal experiences with this topic.

So, YES, crafts are useful in learning. Kids can learn skills such as critical thinking, creativity, fine motor skills, patience and crafts can even build memory retention. Most of these skills listed are pretty straight forward and understandable.

I want to focus this post on memory retention. Another quick google search, on how crafts benefit memory retention, will deliver this; “Crafts help build memory retention by engaging multiple senses and brain regions through the act of creating something tangible, which involves visual processing, motor skills, and sometimes even tactile sensations, effectively solidifying information in the memory through a multi-faceted approach; essentially, the process of making a craft creates a rich memory trace that is easier to recall later on”. (Google AI Overview)

From a personal experience I have seen time and time again that when a child can create with their lesson they tend to retain more of the information. Why do you think science experiments are so popular? Not only are they FUN, but kids retain more of the information when they are creating, building, exploring the topic they are learning about.

While as a public school teacher my team and I always tried to have a craft to go along with any book we read. It was obvious each time our students had a craft they remembered more of the story then the stories that did not have a craft.

Now since homeschooling, we craft almost every day. My kids enjoy it and it really builds critical thinking skills, creativity, decision making, patience and memory retention!

We did a bible lesson about the judges in the bible a while ago. Not a lot of crafts can be found on this topic and I must admit it wasn’t the most exciting lesson. About that same time my older boys were really into creating popsicle people, yes popsicle people. It all started with their TaeKwonDo classes- they would come home and make popsicle people that had different belt colors from TaeKwonDo and then create stories for the people. Well, one of the boys had an idea after our judges lesson to make popsicle judges. I was so impressed and not only did they create a little popsicle judge, but they would use that popsicle as a way to tell others about that judge. Now they can recall the information I wanted them to retain such as the names of the judges and their order, but they gained more knowledge by creating their craft and using it to tell others different details of each judge that we had read in the bible. They have now also created popsicle people for Jacob’s twelve sons, the twelve disciples and so many others. We have draws full of popsicle sticks because now there younger siblings are in on it! This is not even a mandatory assignment. It truly is their love for creating that allows them to be creative, think critically and it helps them to recall information they learned about so long ago.

Crafts can turn an ordinary, dare I say boring lesson into so much more. Crafts really help children to understand a topic, recall more information about a topic, and make any topic more enjoyable to learn about.

I encourage you to craft with your children, at least once a week.

Check out some of our crafts below.

Also make sure to follow our Facebook group: Campbell Homeschool Chronicles for lots of craft ideas.