The Doodle Masters

When was the last time you doodled?

Was it, when you were sitting in a boring classroom and tried to kill your time by doodling weird faces or doodling the slam dunk you saw at the last night NBA or was it at your office meeting when the manager was giving you the targeted sales figure for the upcoming year.

Either at school or office, doodling would have helped us from daydreaming. Helped us to take notes as doodles and helped us to remember them better. I vividly remember drawing the beaker, test tube, pipet and bunsen burner in the chemistry class which helped me to understand the lab process without mugging up.

Doodling is aimless but helps us to be creative and also aids our design takes its initial form. While drawing we observe, study, analyse and we create a meaningful visual art. An art for expressing oneself, drawers thoughts and inner self. Kids use drawing to express their fondest hope or their deepest and abstruse fear. 

Artist like Vincent Von Gough-an untutored genius, though he lived a tumultuous life himself his paintings are emotional canvasses. He used impulsive, gestural application of paint and colours to express emotions. 

Over the years the drawing of young children have attracted researchers, psychologist, teacher and parents to interpret the children's drawing. Though children's do not have the full capability of expressing themselves in words, they can communicate through their symbolic communication method such as drawing. For kids to draw effectively they need to develop their fine motor skills.

 

 

 

What is fine motor skills and how to develop it?

Strength and endurance are important to enable children's to perform the fine motor skills such as holding the crayons, opening doors, zipping zippers etc.

The best way to train their fine motor skills is to provide your child with wide range of materials for them to manipulate. Letting them to play in sand, mud, water (swimming), clay, blocks, crayons, colouring books, safety scissors. According to researchers, development of fine motor skills not only helps the kids to read or draw but also improves their social skills. More developed social skills lead to higher levels of social maturity, more efficient self-help skills, and even better academic performance in children.

Activities That Promote Fine Motor Development

There are wide range of activities that helps in the muscle development of the whole arm, whole hand, and finger strength. 

Play Dough activities will help improve pinch strength. Playing with marbles improves the gross motor skills, geometry skills, and hand-eye coordination. Sorting lids and containers in separate boxes and letting them to match the right lid with containers, this works on their whole hand. Stirring solid dry things in a bowl with the help of a large wooden spoon or stirring a hot soup to cool it down, these activities works on their whole arm. Sorting block or bangles by color and size helps them with pincer grasp and hand-eye coordination. Sifting flour strengthens hand muscles. 

The idea that I want to readers to understand is that there are umpteen number of opportunities for kids to explore the physical forms of this world and by interacting with them they improve not only their fine motor skills, but also improves their social skills, hand-eye coordination, improves language skills, understanding mathematics, physics and chemistry.