When I was a little girl, in the back of our house was a separate, long, mysterious staircase. Creaking steps lead to a magical land overtop the garage–otherwise known as “the bonus room.”

My father called it the junk room. My mother called it the craft room.

Turn the corner atop the staircase, and you’re seized by an explosion of buttons—buttons round, squarish, and shaped like exotic fruits. Oddly shaped glassware, paints, and metal thing-a-ma-bobs poked out of stacks of recycled containers. Enough who’s-it’s and what’s-it’s to send The Little Mermaid into a melodious aside.

Beauty is in the eye of the crafter, it seems.

Did you also grow up crafting or creating? Making things is a hallmark of childhood. Not only is it fun, but crafting is beneficial for several areas of development.

Occupational Therapists can and often do use crafts to…

facilitate fine motor development
challenge and grow sustained attention
decrease anxiety and depression
manage chronic pain
motivate participation in other areas of development

Time Travel: Credibility of Occupational Therapy and Crafts

Before we explore how crafting specifically supports childhood development, let’s take a journey back in time–past my childhood and yours. Back to a time when occupational therapy and crafting first joined forces as healthcare heroes.

In the early 1900s, a nurse by the name of Susan Tracy compiled her research and wrote a practical guide for nurses and caregivers–Studies in Invalid Occupations. She emphasized the intentional, constructive use of crafts to promote wellness. Readers were instructed to make things with inpatients to aid their psychological and physical healing.

Susan Tracy was not only a nurse. She was also one of the founders of the American Occupational Therapy Association. A woman with decades of hands-on experience, her writings and research are deemed credible references to this day.

Here’s a snapshot of her crafting compendium:

Woodwork
Papercrafts

Paper mache
Collages
Paper belts

Cloth animals
Basket Weaving
Needlework

Cloth animals
Knitting

Metalwork
Bookbinding
Painting, Drawing, Clay
Beadwork

Want to do a fun activity with clay?

See this Springtime Nest Craft! Click HERE!

Crafting dates farther back than the 1900s and isn’t specific to a single culture or generation. Native Americans crafted elaborate beaded clothing pieces. Alaskan Inuit tribes carved sculptures and knives out of bones. My uncle in the present-day farm town of West Michigan makes wooden cups for his grandchildren.

Each demographic, country, and time period have its own way of making things for leisure, recreation, and utility. We all make beautiful creations and build beautiful brains in the process.

Four Forebrain Functions and Therapeutic Crafting

There’s a lot of buzz between your ears, and I’m not just talking about the scrambling “to-do list” and “what-if?” chorus planning your upcoming week. The brain is made of several different structures that keep your body regulated, let you know when you’re in pain, and even help plan what you’ll have for dinner tonight.

The forebrain includes structures that help your child regulate emotions, plan and coordinate movement, and motivate action for basic self-care.

Forebrain Function #1: Emotional Regulation

Let’s start with mindfulness. Mindfulness is a psychological phenomenon that happens when you become engrossed in an enjoyable task. When you’re focused on a task in the present moment, your mind and body are not thinking or interacting with internal stimuli such as thoughts of the past or future–except those necessary to accomplish the present activity.

A meta-analysis of mindfulness-based stress reduction studies was compiled in 2015. Although more research is required to produce measurable data, the study suggests mindfulness has a positive effect on stress reduction. Another meta-analysis and systematic review compiled in 2023 suggested mindfulness may decrease anxiety, depression, and fatigue for people with physical dysfunctions–specifically lung cancer in this study.

So, how does research on mindfulness support the therapeutic use of crafts to promote mental health and emotional regulation?

When you find an enjoyable task and lose yourself in it, your mind can unwind and focus on the present. There’s a mental shift from stressors to a productive task. Participating in activities that are enjoyable to us has positive physical and psychological health effects.

Some examples of emotional regulation crafts to address anxiety, anger, or sadness in children are…

The Calm Down Bottle

Use this to interrupt negative thoughts and emotions. You can help your child use the pause to talk or think about why they are experiencing a given emotion and what action they need to take next.

Mandala Coloring

With tiny spaces and repetitive patterns, this craft allows your child to have space to think about their emotions.

Metalwork or woodwork

These gross-motor and heavy-pressure fine-motor activities help your child let out anger or anxiety. Follow up with a calming fine-motor craft like coloring or painting.

A Mandala Painting Activity allows time and space to process thoughts and emotions, while working on brain and fine motor skills.

Forebrain Function #2: Sensory Processing

Sensory processing helps your child interpret information their senses pick up from the environment. This sense is important for developing safety skills and lets your child know when something’s not quite right.

Your child receives sensory information through their...

eyes
nose
ears
tongue
skin
body position
head position
internal organs

Your child can develop their sensory processing skills through crafting. Crafting allows a variety of sensory experiences. Your child can learn to self-regulate as they experience the sticky, the slimy, and the doughy.

Allowing your child to experience a wide range of textures, smells, tastes, and even sounds will help them learn what is “too much” or “not enough” for them as they grow and develop. This will help them learn how to protect themselves and self-regulate.

Variations in color, texture, taste, and smell are especially accessible with crafts like…

pottery
candle-making
painting
paper Mache
baking or no-bake food crafts

Some children have a low tolerance or are hypersensitive to some sensory experiences– which causes them distress. Others are hyposensitive and seek out sensory experiences to feel happy and calm.

If your child has sensory hypersensitivity crafts in a therapeutic setting provide the opportunity for them to learn they’re safe–even though some textures or sounds do not feel quite right. Repeated, voluntary exposure to sensory experiences may help your child increase their tolerance. Your child can also use these experiences to adapt to environments or plan around unpleasant sensory experiences in the future.

If your child has sensory hyposensitivity, crafting can help them learn how to interact with tools and their environment appropriately to accomplish a goal. For example, cutting slower rather than haphazardly to complete a math assignment about shapes, perimeter, and area.

Forebrain Function #3: Motor Coordination

The forebrain works with sensory structures of your child’s body like the eyes, touch receptors of the skin, sense of balance, and sense of body position in relation to other people or objects. Together, the forebrain and sensory structures help your child know which muscles to use and how big or small of a movement to make.

Motor Coordination helps your child know how to move their muscles to accomplish a goal. This skill includes small movements of the fingers and hands. It also includes big movements of the head, torso, and larger limbs of the body.

Crafting can be used to develop fine motor coordination–the smaller motor movements of hands and fingers. The forebrain stores a mental picture from past experiences and uses this as a reference to estimate, adapt, and plan an appropriate motor response to meet a goal.

This information combined with present information from their senses lets your child know how much pressure to apply when picking up something. It also tells your child where to position their hands and fingers to grasp or let go.

Crafting allows your child the opportunity to learn how to use their mind, muscles, and eyes altogether.

For example, when your child has the experience of picking up a crayon to draw or color a picture, they learn where to position their fingers to start and continue the activity. They learn how hard to press down to make the color show up. They also learn spatial information–where to position their fingers, hands, and arms to color different areas of a picture.

Forebrain Function #4: Decision Development

The frontal lobe is an important part of the forebrain that helps us understand consequences. It’s a critical part of your child’s brain as they grow and develop.

Unfortunately for parents of teenagers, this structure is not fully formed until about age 25. Hang in there, their brains will grow up. You’ll have your sanity and complete control of your refrigerator before you know it.

A subsection of the frontal lobe is the prefrontal cortex. This structure is responsible for decision-making. Other functions of the prefrontal cortex include…

Problem-solving
Planning
Working Memory
Critical Thinking
Cognitive flexibility
Focus and Attention
Behavior Management
Emotional Regulation

Crafting is an opportunity to plan, practice delayed gratification, learn cause and effect, make positive choices, problem-solve, and cope with mistakes. Impulse control can also be challenged and addressed through more desirable crafts that require increased safety awareness.

For example, an older child may be interested in woodworking which could require the use of electric, heavy, or sharp tools. Through the use of simpler tools, the child can develop and demonstrate increased impulse control and safety awareness. They can then grow their skills with a more complex activity.

Everyday Applications of Fine Motor Development

If your child has participated in crafts such as coloring, they have memories to reference the skill of mark-making. This is a skill that will carry over into a high-level fine motor activity like writing their name.

Fine motor coordination is an important academic skill for your child to develop. Handwriting, for example, requires regulation of hand position, finger position, and degree of pencil pressure.

Your child requires fine motor coordination to complete academic tasks such as…

Typing and general computer use
Cutting with scissors
Calculator use
Handwriting
Turning pages in a book

Fine motor coordination is also an important self-care skill. Your child uses fine motor coordination when they…

Tie shoes
Fasten buttons or zippers
Open lunch containers
Unscrew a toothpaste cap
Tear toilet paper

Helping Hands Therapy Groups: Crafting Development

Helping Hands Therapy Services hosts therapy groups each season to help your child grow and develop. A few of these groups like our Pre-K Language Enrichment Group and our Toddler Language Enrichment Group include craft activities facilitated by a licensed speech pathologist. Our Motor Group includes craft activities facilitated by a licensed Occupational Therapist and is specifically designed to help your child start growing their fine motor and gross motor skills. Our Handwriting Prep Class focuses on fine motor development specific to handwriting.

Check out our Group Classes and Therapy page to discover fun, age-appropriate learning opportunities for children ages 3-18. Class sizes are limited. Sign up Today. https://www.helpinghandstherapyservices.com/group-therapy