ART for children

I read this article some two weeks ago and decided to buy scissors and glue for my kids. Their ‘art work’ currently uses crayons (which seems to get broken and missing in such a short period of time) and colour pencils on paper. I make sure they have excess papers (‘scrap paper’ ie one side blank) so they can scribble anytime. In the first session that I let my kids used the scissors, I realised that I have taken the scissors for granted. My kids actually had a hard time using them. Or is it because the scissors are small and blunt? (for safety reasons) Haha. Anyway, here’s the article on ‘Playing with art’ from the Star, written by Shamini Dias.

Art can work wonders for your child’s development.

No, you don’t need expensive art lessons and fancy materials. With just some basic materials, most of which you have at home, your child can have a wonderfully creative time and lots of fun while developing all kinds of skills for school and life.

What can art do for your child? Art gives children, especially young children, a way to develop their thinking and creative skills, self-expression, and prepares them for strong literacy development.

ART = self-expression, self-discovery, self-awareness

Art is a totally non-threatening activity. With so many different media and materials, children do not feel limited and are encouraged to explore and express ideas. And because art is visual, children can think and talk about their ideas as they share and enjoy their artwork.

ART = risk-taking, decision making in a safe environment. Art builds confidence and self-esteem

When making art, children make decisions and engage in problem solving – they consider choice of colour, shape, composition, materials to use, organisation and sequencing of tasks naturally as they play with their art materials. “Where shall I put the whale?”, “What pattern do I cut the paper in?”

When we let children just play with their art rather than expect perfect renditions of our idea of how something should look, we give children so much scope for experimentation and expression that they feel a great sense of achievement in what they do. They therefore develop very positive attitudes about risk-taking and problem-solving; problems become challenges, “errors” becomes exciting points of learning.

ART = imagination and ideas

Children have very active imaginations and interesting ideas about their world. Art is a superb channel for allowing children to share this with you. Many children need an outlet for their feelings about things around them and art is an effective and safe channel for this.

ART = development of language and thinking

Children who engage in any kind of free art activity use their hands to manipulate objects. They develop strong motor control and are ready to handle writing implements with confidence. Art, especially 2D art - drawing, painting, and even some 3D art on paper like collage, introduce the child to the world of paper and 2D representation and prepare them for reading.

Any art activity involves looking at, exploring and creating patterns. Children can grasp concepts like size, shapes, types, similarities and contrasts through art. They are therefore being prepared for the more abstract version of these concepts later. Pattern recognition is a critical skill for literacy and thinking especially as children move through the higher levels of school. An early introduction to art can help them develop the ability to see patterns in information and the ability to sort and shape information into meaningful units.

It is easy to set up art activities at home. All you need are old magazines and books to cut out words and pictures for collage work, some coloured paper, poster paints, brushes, sponges and a space where your child can freely enjoy playing and messing about trying out all kinds of art projects.

Setting up to play with art

ENABLE
Set up space and material so that your child can get down to playing with art materials quickly and easily. Children are not motivated to do any art if just getting the materials and setting up takes too long.

Allow your child to make his/her own choices and enable this by having a few different types of materials handy. Making a decision, choosing how one is going to express oneself motivates a child to confidently take charge of his/her own work.

PRAISE
Be lavish with praise. Get excited about your child’s ideas and experiments. Art is an area in a child’s life that can be totally free of judgment and criticism. Your child is not doing art to be “good” at it. He/She is doing art for the pure pleasure it gives and picking up skills necessary for other aspects of learning and language development. Being “good” at art by adult standards is really not important for a child.

DISPLAY
Nothing is more motivating than having work displayed. Also, art work displayed builds the ability to be reflective and develops evaluation skills as children naturally make decisions on what they would prefer to be displayed. Set up a space - an “art gallery” for your child’s work. A section of wall and some blu tac will do the trick.

Ideas for playing with art

The cut-up box
Create a cut-up box - set up a box in which you collect old magazines, and interesting pictures from calendars. This will become a most useful resource for your child to do collage work, to illustrate pieces of writing, to find interesting and colourful letters to create titles for pieces of writing.

Word collage – connecting with language
Get your child to look for and cut out specific words, for example, Adjectives, Words of three syllables, words stating with a particular letter etc. You can follow the kinds of language focus your child’s teacher is using in class. These words can then be collaged together with pictures.

Number collage – connecting with math
Find out what number or math concept your child is doing at school. Create large colourful collages about it, for example odd number collages, prime number collage, or a collage of mathematical symbols. These make great posters that can hang in your child’s room as visual reviews of these concepts.

Playing with art – making it useful
Children love it when their work serves a useful purpose. Get some pieces of sponge, some paint and large sheets of paper. Use the sponge and dab different colours on the paper. The paper when dry can be used as wrapping paper, as background on which another drawing can be made.

Shamini Dias works with parents and communities to enhance children’s learning in school.