From the first months of life, the baby craves to learn. He is interested in absolutely everything around and his curiosity knows no bounds. Emotions and feelings are his first tools to help him learn a new world. Speech has not yet been developed, but, according to scientists, his hands serve as an auxiliary speech apparatus for the baby. After all, even primitive people at first expressed themselves only with gestures and sounds. First, the babies develop hand movements, then the articulation of syllables, and the perfection of speech depends on training the movement of the fingers.
In the nursery, the baby tries to touch everything with tactile and taste receptors, first touching everything with his hands. The development of hands, especially subtle movements, is closely related to the development of speech and thinking of the child. That is why it is very important to engage in modeling from ball clay as early as possible, helping the baby and guiding him in the preparatory work with other materials and in mastering various tools.
The benefits of classes
Ball plasticine in its structure has a valuable ductility property necessary for the work of small hands of babies, especially for children with weak arm muscles, with which it is very useful to conduct modeling with plasticine.
Classes with plasticine, in addition to strengthening muscles, develop imagination, form fantasy, and intelligence. Psychologists point to a direct relationship between the degree of development of the baby’s imagination and his emerging intellectual abilities. By stimulating the development of a child’s imagination with the help of crafts from plasticine, his ability to imagine images of objects that are actually not in front of his eyes at the moment, parents lay the foundation for their baby’s highly developed intelligence. The ability to fantasize forms the child’s ability to operate with abstract concepts on which the entire education system rests.
When and how to start modeling
Unanimously, early childhood educators insist that it is important to start plasticine classes as early as possible. Already from 9 months it is recommended to acquaint the baby with viscous material, teaching him how to perform basic actions with ball plasticine:
- ability to knead plasticine - press on plasticine with hands and fingers;
- ability to pinch off - tearing off small pieces of plasticine with the help of fingers;
- spanking - patting on plasticine with the whole palm with straightened fingers;
- squeezing plasticine until it is flattened.
These are far from all the possibilities.
Useful features
Ball or granular clay is a foam balls of different sizes, interconnected by elastic acrylic adhesive. Balls do not crumble. Balls are small - for children of preschool age, large - for the smallest creators.
The granular structure of plasticine ball fine-grained in the process of a fascinating educational and creative process massages the active areas of the baby's palms, improving speech and intelligence. Over time, the baby's fingers become agile and sensitive. By developing fine motor skills of hands, we help the development of speech, memory, attention, thinking, auditory and visual perception of babies. A greater effect in children develops through regular classes, which will be even more interesting if parents call for help their imagination in a variety of plasticine crafts. Indeed, ball clay is a very interesting and diverse material for children's creativity. Not only children, but also adults enjoy working with him.
Types of plasticine
Granular clay is produced in different colors, in convenient jars or blister packs. Colors can be mixed. Quickly hardening ball plasticine is released (within 24 hours) and non-hardening. For preschool children, non-drying clay is more suitable, since skills to make durable crafts are not yet developed. At this age, the child is only in the process of getting to know the material, trying to realize his creative ideas, not yet planning ready-made works, admiring his vivid improvisations. The colors of plasticine are classic, neon, and even with sparkles, which leads kids to delight when working with ball plasticine.
Let us further consider crafts and applications with this material.
Drawings and applications with ball plasticine
Non-drying granular clay is fragile and not designed for durable toys, so it is ideal for bright applications that can then be framed and presented as a birthday present to a friend. Similar contour drawings are already attached to a set of plasticine. It is only necessary to apply granular material in different colors. Bright holiday applique is ready.
Bright drawing can be done independently. To do this, on colored paper, you need to draw a contour of a large pattern, for example, a mushroom or a butterfly and “paint” it with granular plasticine - you will get a great contour volumetric pattern.
Plasticine Crafts
What can be done? Bright surprises from ball clay are possible for older children from the age of 4, since the figures are obtained without clear streamlined shapes and more efforts should be made to compact. Crafts made - flowers, snails, smurfs are ideal as souvenir gifts to relatives or friends of babies. You can decorate photo frames with grainy plasticine, make bright colored stained-glass windows, decorate decorative vases, cling to the surface with grainy plasticine in the form of various patterns or roll out the mass with a rolling pin and wrap around the base, then cut off the excess. In the same way, figures are made, for example, capsules from kinder eggs, pencils, mashed jars are taken as a basis.
And a butterfly made of bright ball clay will turn out for any child. To do this, you just need to cut out the template from thick cardboard. Each fragment of a butterfly is attached to it: body, wings, antennae. Then follows the laying out of a plasticine ball pattern, which can be arranged in several layers to give greater bulk crafts.
Colorful magical cities, marvelous gardens, bright seas with ships - everything is subject to this flexible plasticine with magic balls along with an inexhaustible childish imagination.