It's Great to Create! Get to Know our Little Creatives Collection
It is great to create with your little one, in the wonderful world of Faber-Castell Little Creatives! We’re here to support your art play adventures by inspiring creative confidence in you and your little one. We want you to be big, bold, bright and daring—with a gigantic dash of caring and art play sharing! Our mission is to support young children in developing critical fine motor skills, emotional connections and, most importantly, to celebrate the joy of creativity. To achieve this, we’ve incorporated early childhood development teaching approaches in specially designed activities. Together, we’ll work with you and your little one to become confident & creative art play artists.
Art play is important as a creative teaching approach
Our Little Creatives World forms a sound foundation of learning. We build social and emotional connections, practise fine motor skills and encourage exploring sensory experiences. Engaging in art play activities is a wonderful way to support early childhood development stages. All children benefit in taking part in art! Each child develops, in their own way, all at different stages and that's okay—so be patient and kind, and they’ll shine— each in their own beautiful way.
Art play allows children to dive into their own world of imagination and artistic creations. Young artists create for themselves and naturally focus on their own perspective. They process their world through art, using it to make sense of what they see, feel and do.
So, let their creativity flow and imagination grow! This is an important time to offer young artists care and support. There is no right, no wrong or it how it should be. It's completely fine to just ‘be’! Be full of colour, be a big bright imagination, be an impossible idea—but always let it be a brilliant start to art. Is it a crazy cat, a wonderful whale or an impossible invention? No worries! Art can be anything at all.
Take time, ask interesting art-focused question and listen carefully to discover their creative world. Remember each line, mark, dot and spot may have a purpose or meaning as a part of their Little Creatives art play world.
Emotional social connections intertwine a sense of self, positive wellbeing and connection to others. It's all about building strong healthy relationships, filled with kindness and sharing with others. When we are patient with ourselves, we slowly grow these heart-strong skills. For little ones, heart-strong emotions can become overwhelming, so forming connections to emotions through art can soothe the mind and foster growth over time.
In a child's early years, emotions can be a struggle. Sometimes we need to stop, give them a snuggle and remind them that everything is alright. Art play helps your little one to build these emotional skills as they play and dabble in art. It's a way for them to express themselves, their ideas and inspirations.
Helpful hand-eye coordination - focus and refine
Hand-eye coordination is vital for brain development, and involves the signals sent to the brain from what your little one sees with their eyes & manipulates with their hands when they create. These skills grow every single day in so many ways, especially through drawing, writing and hands-on sensory experiences. Art play brings fine-tuned hand-eye coordination to life by encouraging regular artistic activities.
Fine motor skills
Grab, grasp, grip, snip, squeeze, squash and splosh—these are all fabulous fine motor skills little ones adore creating with. Building these skills promotes hand strength, an essential part of developing muscle memory that allows young artists to make creative movements without the effort of thinking how to do them.
Scribble
Scribbles, lines and swirls are all crucial for developing hand-eye coordination for early writing stages—and before you know it, little ones are making letter shapes! Crayons feature a larger writing tip surface, helping little ones to connect their crayon to the page to stabilise their first steps in writing. If designed well, easy-to-hold crayons help children transform their scribbles and lines into shapes and letters.
Draw
Drawing and colouring are fantastic ways to strengthen hands—for example, colouring inside the lines encourages little ones to control crayons and builds the essential skills of early writers and artists. Little Creatives Easy Grasp Finger & Bulb Crayons feature ergonomic shapes to help the youngest of children hold a crayon and to develop early grip techniques. A healthy, successful grip enables control, promotes whole hand strength and helps children develop essential fine motor skills in early writing.
Snip
The simple, snippy movements of opening and closing of scissors are excellent at building hand strength, developing hand-eye coordination and growing fine motor skills. With practise, precision and a dash of patience, little ones can learn to cut lines with accuracy. Developing these skills in snipping, cutting and shaping can also transform your little one’s creativity into 3D fun!
Squeeze
Squeezy painting & dough modelling are brilliant ways to encourage creative hand strength and build hand-eye coordination! Squishing, rolling and shaping dough promotes creative thinking while your little ones make, create and grow healthy fine motor skills.
Colorful creativity - open ending discovery and playÂ
Getting a little bit messy is a part of creative art exploration—particularly when colour is involved. Choosing colors inspires children to think big, make active choices and also helps develop future decision-making skills. The wonderful world of colour is also essential for their emotional development. When little ones make colour connections, it creates an expressive experience—colour can balance emotions and activate the imagination. Exploring colour helps children connect with the world around them by making senses of what they see and how they feel.
Sensational sensory play - hands on experiential learning
Let's squish, squash and roll. When little ones play with their hands, they activate touch receptors. This sends sensory messages to the brain, helping young children develop creative thinking skills essential in shaping future learning. Sensory play is important for children's development—by using touch, little ones imprint learning memories and have sensory creativity sparked. Touch-focused sensory activities help with brain development in young children—for example, sculpting with clay strengthens hands and encourages active minds.
Language skills - speaking and listening
Talk, chatter and natter to your little one while you explore in art play! Talking and working together with your child assists language development—this includes explaining your thinking, what you’re doing and how you’re solving problems. The more words little ones hear, the bigger the vocabulary they form—like little super-charged sponges, they’re always absorbing new information. Embellishing art play with stories is another great idea. Become creative writers and artists by inventing worlds and spinning silly stories together – working side by side, talking as you go, promotes language development and emotional connections in tandem.
Introducing our art play activities
Little Creatives has a unique art play approach. Art play is a wonderful way to explore the concepts of art, imagination and creativity in conjunction with important stages of development in a child’s early years across drawing and writing.
Art play supports the earliest of learners to develop fine motor skills and emotional connections whilst promoting mindfulness, wellbeing, sensory experiences and artistic discoveries. Most importantly, however, it celebrates the joy of creativity. We use early childhood development pedagogy in our activities, supporting your little one to become a confident, creative artist.
You’ll find easy-to-create & adaptable activities that can be short, sweet and sprinkled throughout the day or stretched into hours of fun. We’ll show you exactly what to do, guiding and supporting to you bring out your best—we’ll set you and your little one up for creative art play success.
It’s important to foster art play artists in both independent and guided activities Our art play activities offer a variety of ways to engage your little one and have been divided into both guided and independent varieties. To begin, start with guided art play adventures—this is a brilliant time to be a side-by-side learner with your child, exploring and helping them to discover the art play activities. As they build confidence, let your child work independently and celebrate their art creations with happy high-fives.
It doesn't matter what the result is—whether your little one is a budding Picasso or creates a big beautiful oops—art appreciation is all in the eye of the beholder. We focus on fun in an art play adventure. We encourage you to give it a go and to purely enjoy the moment. Little ones will all develop differently, but the most important part is knowing where to start!