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It has been found that the students pay better attention when they were allowed to manipulate objects or keep their hands busy. And this is where crafts come to play a major role whereby most teacher-counsellors nowadays cannot even imagine trying to do a lesson without a craft. Here we have discussed 3 critical reasons why as a part of educational counselling techniques, today’s 21st century educators must use crafts for school counselling lessons.
 

Mindfulness
 

Mindfulness helps individuals find the 3 key aspects of life - focus, balance and peace. With respect to the kids it lets them encourage important life, school, and social skills. Cutting, pasting, and colouring can be termed as mindful activities. These activities keep students engaged with just enough brain squeeze, without being too stressful. You can further encourage your students to notice the little things while doing their craft by telling them to be even more mindful. This includes noticing and appreciating the colours they are using, listening to the sounds of the paper cutting or crayon moving across the page and enjoying the sensation of a finished product. As your students get involved in regular mindful activities, they will reap the following benefits:
 

• better concentration
• improved memory
• higher grades
• reduced stress

Some mindfulness crafts include Mandala Hands, Painted Rocks, Playdough Roll, etc.
 

Engagement
 

With engagement in a craft, they are keeping their hands and minds busy. In such situations, they are less likely to get involved in off task behaviours. Moreover, since crafts don’t consume all of their attention, they can still pay attention to you if you are talking about the lesson. Hence sometimes you can play an informative audio-visual related to their curriculum while they complete their craft; this lets them get another perspective on the topic of the day, other than just your lecturing. Therefore, you can foster engagement by using various other formats to teach a lesson that can be in the form of videos, group activities, crafts, whole group discussion and games.
 

Take-a-ways
 

One of the most useful things about crafting with a lesson is that they have a really cute reminder of the lesson to take home with them. You can keep the crafts in a binder as a portfolio. Portfolios are a great a visual way to represent all of the coping skills that they are learning throughout the year. They are also an amazing way to get a good score during your evaluation by the administrators. Similarly, when your students take the crafts home, they can talk about the activities they did in school and encourage conversations with their families which is a huge bonus.
 

To know more about such Counselling Skills for Teachers, you can enrol yourself in good Counselling training courses, like those offered by Asian College of Teachers.