Drawing is a process that all children naturally engage in, from the time they first discover they can hold a crayon.
A child’s drawing progress reflects a strong connection to their overall development.
Children develop drawing skills at different ages, yet they share common traits as they move through the stages of drawing development from toddlerhood to preschool.
Here is a brief look at drawing for toddlers and preschoolers, followed by 14 benefits of drawing for children.
Benefits of Drawing for Toddlers
Exploring with drawing instruments at an early age provides more than just the joy of discovery; there are many reasons why drawing is essential in early childhood.
When toddlers see you drawing, they are often surprised that the crayons in their little fists leave marks on paper. They quickly learn the cause-and-effect relationship of their drawing efforts.
Eventually, those scribbles become more controlled, as children form lines, loops, and somewhat wobbly circles. These forms later develop into writing skills, which is a crucial benefit of drawing for toddlers.
Benefits of Drawing for Preschoolers
Children of preschool age learn to draw various shapes, even combining those to form representations of people, letter-like shapes, and other basic images.
Extensive drawing experience is a crucial foundation for learning to write, highlighting the significant role of drawing in education.
Various benefits include the following skills:
- Eye-hand coordination
- Self-confidence
- Fine and gross muscle development
- Problem solving
- Observation
Read all about how children learn to draw a person.
14 Benefits of Drawing in Early Childhood
What are the benefits of drawing in the early years?
Below, the many advantages of drawing and painting.
These aspects are interconnected, as children develop essential skills through practice with crayons, pencils, markers, and paintbrushes.
1. Motor Skills
Drawing helps children strengthen the small muscles in their hands and fingers while also engaging the larger muscles in their arms and shoulders.
These motor skills are essential for later learning to write.
2. Creativity
With access to various drawing and painting tools, preschoolers can explore the artistic process freely, without focusing on a final product.
This allows them to freely try different strategies without worrying about any prescribed “rules.”
Here are some art activities that focus on the process, not the product.
3. Cognitive Development
What can children’s drawings reveal?
During early childhood, kids’ brains are quickly forming neural connectors. When they draw and paint, they are using many of their senses, which helps to “wire” the brain for deep thinking, such as pattern recognition, symbolism, and mental representation.
Children’s drawings are clues that show us their levels of intellectual development.
4. Planning Skills
Once they are past the scribbling stage, children begin to plan what they intend to draw on the paper, where each figure or shape should be placed, and how to leave room for the next object they expect to draw.
Planning also supports essential life skills that children develop as they grow.
5. Eye-Hand Coordination
Drawing gives children practice in using the eyes to accurately guide the movements of the hands.
This eye-hand coordination benefits sports, handwriting, reading, and everyday tasks like buttoning clothes and tying shoes.
6. Visual Perception
Visual perception includes matching similar objects, remembering visual things, noticing that objects are the same thing even if the sizes or colours are different, and finding hidden objects in pictures.
Drawing affords practice in all these aspects and helps children later on in copying shapes, handwriting, and organization of mathematical problems. [source]
7. Attention Span
Kids tend to focus better and for longer periods when engaged in activities that interest them.
Having the freedom to choose exactly what they want to draw is of high interest for many, especially if the work area is free of other distractions, like television or various electronic gadgets.
Read more about how to develop a child’s attention span.
8. Healthy Emotional Release and Expression
Drawing can positively impact children’s emotions and moods in various ways.
They might depict a problem in their lives, such as adults arguing, or simply express emotions through a gloomy thundercloud. Or they might just fill the page with a gloomy thundercloud.
9. Language
This allows them to express their feelings about their experiences.
On the other hand, they might draw a magical kingdom where everyone wears a smile and the sun shines brightly, which can serve as positive escapism. [source]
How does drawing help a child’s development of language?
Drawing provides opportunities for children to connect words with images, often pointing to and naming the objects they create.
They often talk with adults or peers about what they plan to draw, think of words in their minds while they are drawing, and then talk about the images once they are completed.
It is also a good idea to ask your children about their pictures and label the objects as they are pointed out to you. [source]
10. Imagination
Without limitations, kids access their vivid imaginations while drawing. Talk with them about their pictures, and they often want to tell you the “story” behind the drawing.
Encouraging imagination in this way supports future skills in creative writing, science, technology, engineering, and maths.
11. Problem Solving
Drawing helps children process daily emotional challenges while developing spatial awareness and object manipulation skills.
Gaining a sense of control over emotions is a key benefit of drawing at every stage.
As they mature, manipulating images on paper is an asset to children in mathematical thinking and other types of problem solving. [source]
12. Pre-Writing Skills
Drawing provides valuable experiences that help strengthen essential pre-writing skills, such as:
- Finger, hand, arm and shoulder strength
- Hand dominance
- Pencil grasp
- Interpreting and making sense of images
- Manipulation of objects
- Eye-hand coordination
- Crossing the imaginary midline
- Using both hands together (bilateral coordination)
13. Pre-Maths Skills
Drawing helps develop a foundation for early math skills by reinforcing concepts like proportionality and symmetry while enhancing overall cognitive abilities.
Sketching human figures, for example, causes children to focus on the number of body features and exactly how they are organized. [source]
14. Memory
When they draw, kids stretch and exercise their memories in a few different ways.
Sketching something new they observe in the room, for example, can actually help them remember it and any conversation that occurred around the object.
They also reach into their memories to think about images or events seen or experienced in the past that they could represent through their art. [source]
Clearly, drawing plays a vital and far-reaching role in child development.
Drawing allows children to tell stories, build emotional resilience, and develop lifelong skills.
