Creative play for children is an important part of any child’s development and growth, as it helps to increase their motor skills, imagination, concentration and cognitive capabilities. It will also help to increase the child’s hand eye co-ordination, planning and ability to follow instructions.
There are lots of things that you can do to encourage this, such as arts and crafts, drawing, painting, building bricks and clay work. All children love being active and when they are not able to get out in the fresh air then these activities are great and children can often be enthralled for hours.
Creative play and in particularly clay work, is an ideal medium for children that find it difficult to pay attention, sit still or communicate easily, such as ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) or Autism. Clay enables the child to occupy their hands and provides a focus on something without having to look at someone directly and/or express their emotions and feelings in non-verbal communication. Clay work is often a favourite with play therapists and can been found in most therapeutic centres.
There are a huge range of oven baked clay's available and it would be almost impossible to review everyone in this post. So here are details and ideal uses for are few of the more popular heat cured clay's, to start you off.
Fimo Professional; Effects Polymer Clay is stiffer than some of the other polymer clay's and remains flexible after is has been baked in the oven. It is great for more detailed work such as cane work, miniatures, flower sculptures and doll figurines. It is also perfect for making jewellery and because of the wide range of colours and effects available it can produce some very beautiful and realistic jewellery pieces.
Clay work and sculpture isn't just for the professional artist, all you need is a few basic tools and a little imagination. In fact you don't even need that much imagination, thanks to social media! Pinterest and Instagram will provide thousands of clay art projects and tutorials at you finger tips.
Clay artists have a never ending choice of clay sculpture materials and in fact many are not technically clay but can create very similar sculptures and art projects as the professional ceramicists and sculptors.
The 3 basic types are oil-based, wax-based and water-based. They are usually categorize as heat-cured, self-hardening air-dry or non-hardening. There is also ceramic and stone-based clays, which need to be cured in a kiln at very high temperatures.
