All children love to paint and draw - an easel is an arts and crafts gift idea they are sure to love. As adults, we tend to think easels are for serious "grown up" art but kids use and love them at kindergarten and school - and for a lot more than painting.
As well as drawing and painting, multi-surface easels (the best type) are great for collages, for tic-tac-toe type games, and playing teacher too. These have chalk board one side and a white erase board on the other, with paper clipped on or fed from an economical and convenient paper roll. With three different creative surfaces, children can explore a wide variety of materials and projects.
A great gift for children as young as two or three, parents love easels too! The better easels have storage trays for paint pots, crayons, and so on, making the easel a self-contained arts zone that's always ready to go. Kids can stop and start as they please without having to clear a space and clear everything away afterwards. In other words, parents get their dinner table back and kids get to act on their inspirations!
An easel has learning and developmental benefits too. Standing and moving around an easel combined with the finer movements of painting and drawing promotes both gross and fine motor skills. It is the ideal gift for children who love to be creative but hate to sit still.
Working with images also promotes logical and spatial thinking skills - the ability to solve problems by identifying sequences, patterns and relationships, and so on, and to learn from and communicate through images. These skills are well developed in architects, physicists, computer programmers and so on.
On an emotional level, a standing easel literally gives a child their own space for solo play, important for childrens emotional development. It gives them an opportunity to connect with and explore their emotions, and feel in control.
There are several children's standing easels to choose from but the best are designed with these benefits in mind. Ticking all the right boxes is the Deluxe Easel by Melissa & Doug, the well-known learning toy specialists. Recommended by parents and experts alike, it is double-sided, has roomy storage trays both sides, a paper roll older and is easily adjusted in height up to 4 feet.
Other popular easels include the Little Tikes Easel for Two and the Rose Smart Art easel, but they fall short in terms of features or are too complicated, and suit narrower age groups. A straightforward, well-equipped, generously-sized adjustable easel is a gift that will last children for years.
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