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Art for Kindergartners
Taking a look at how children develop artistically
By Ruth Beechick
Children’s art development passes through two stages. The first stage is manipulation of the materials. By manipulating, they gradually move into the stage of representation in which they come to represent various items in their drawings. Many teachers believe in letting children creatively develop through those stages. They are called developmentalists. Opposing them are teachers who feel that they must direct the children’s art to help them progress better. Thus two opposing views are 1) creative art development versus 2) directed art .
Creative Art and Directed Art
Children who are allowed to play with the crayons and paints and other art media will try out what they can do with them. One day a child may see a circle he made, put two “eyes” in it, and say. “Look, it’s me,” or, “It’s a man.” This way he gradually moves into the representation stage. At first the drawings represent something accidentally, and he names them after he makes them. Then he more and more often can plan ahead of time for his drawing to represent a man or other object.
Teachers who are developmentalists allow the children to use their own minds and grow creatively in this art ability. They try to stimulate thinking by perhaps a visit to see farm animals, or watch an airplane, or some other experience. But then the children think up their own ways to draw their experience. They may not always do this well, but it comes from their own thinking. It promotes their growth in art ability and their cognitive development as well.
Teachers who think they can direct children’s art growth might after a farm visit hand the children a cow picture to color. Or they might show on the chalkboard how to draw a barn and ask the children to copy that model. These assignments are teacher-directed art.
Research on Creative Art
versus Directed Art
In a research on art development, 5000 children of kindergarten ages 4 to 6 were studied. For a period of two years, half the children copied adult designed models and half followed a program of creative art. Some children who had copied adult models were retarded in their own art progress for the full two years, as compared with the “creative” group. If a child is given only one or two models, he may still make progress in devising his own drawings for other objects. But if he repeatedly works from adult models, there is little opportunity left for his own development in art. In such cases the children tended to become classroom problems because they had difficulty thinking for themselves.
Another experiment with slightly older children was set up to help determine the effects of dictatorial methods of teaching. This research used 250 children of primary ages. All the children had been in a program of creative art, but at the time of the experiment 125 of them were given ten lessons of a restrictive or dictatorial nature, while the remaining 125 continued with their regular creative experiences. The restrictive art lessons consisted of copying drawings from the chalkboard or worksheets, coloring or tracing drawings, following verbal directions to produce drawings, and cutting geometric forms such as a triangle and a square to make a house. In these ways they drew such things as a house, apple, tree, bird, or snowman.
On the eleventh day both groups went to a fire station and on their return to school were asked to make pictures of their experiences. The drawings and paintings of the “creative” group illustrated their observations and personal reactions and were successful in varying degrees, while 44 percent of the “restrictive” group failed to depict the fire station outing at all, but resorted to doing trees and other items in the manner which they had been taught in the previous ten days. Still others in this group regressed to the stage of manipulating the art media, rather than performing at their usual higher stage—that of producing drawings from their own heads.
We can’t teach drawing by drilling on the physical skills; it comes from the mind. When Joni Eareckson became a quadriplegic she thought she would not be able to draw anymore. But a therapist told her the drawing skill was not in her hand; it was in her head. With this encouragement, she learned to hold a pen in her mouth and draw the pictures that were in her head. If your children draw ears too large, or if they leave out the trunk of a person and attach legs directly to the head, it is not hand training they need so much as time for the mind to develop more and opportunity to sharpen their powers of observation. One way to sharpen their observation and develop their thinking is through drawing—their way, not ours.
The creative approach to art not only develops the aesthetic nature; it also helps children’s cognitive development. The children who made their own decisions about how to show the fire station trip and who solved the problems in carrying out their plans were more active mentally and were active on a higher mental level than if the teacher had given them a fire truck to color, or had drawn a model station for them to copy.
Here, then, is a dilemma because of our modern habit of using published lessons. A published lesson would end with the fire truck or whatever to color, not a creative activity. A publisher’s staff that understood the creative system once planned lessons to fit the creative approach. All the teacher materials were there as usual, but the lessons did not end with a picture to color. They gave the teacher creative ideas instead, sometimes games or other activities. Or if they suggested art it was the creative kind of assignment.
The staff did not get away with this for long. The publisher wanted to get more money from more student sheets to sell. And the teachers had been brainwashed into thinking the lessons must end with a fire truck to color or other fact from the lesson. They thought that was the “doing” part of the lesson. The children first learned by listening; then they “applied” the lesson with crayon and paper. Moreover, the Sunday school teachers wanted the sheet to say something to parents when it was sent home; it was a message for the parents and not primarily for the students.
So that publisher and his customers went back to the old way. Each week their children bent over a table, crayon in hand, working quietly. Everybody thought that was great education. They loved the “doing” time at the end of the lesson, little knowing that the children’s minds would be growing more if they were planning their own drawing of a fire station or of sheep in a pasture or of whatever was in the lesson.
It might be better if we relied less on art or handwork for academic learning and made more use of games, rhymes, sound stories, conversation, pretending, and other learning activities. In homeschooling, art often is just for art, and not necessarily to help other content learning. Or try it for worship. Children could enjoy the beautiful colors God made. They could express joy in using the hands God gave them. One four-year-old was painting with blue when the teacher said quietly, “God made blue.” “He did?” the child exclaimed with surprise in his voice, and he painted his blue with new vigor. After that, the teacher would not think of pulling the child down to the level needed to complete a directed painting lesson—even with blue.
God created wondrous beauties for man to enjoy, and He created man with an aesthetic side to his nature so he can enjoy them. One of man’s first jobs was to dress the garden and keep it. God’s plan for the tabernacle included elaborate art, for which He gave men the necessary skills. Much of the greatest art in the history of the world is that which was done to the glory of God.
All children, of course, will not grow up to be artists, but all should experience art creatively, especially during the kindergarten and primary years when they are developing through the manipulative and representative stages of art thinking. We give opportunities for children to grow in their language, their muscular coordination, their singing, and numerous other ways. We can let them grow in art as well.
Dr. Ruth Beechick has taught all elementary grades and has watched many children develop in their art ability.
© 2010 by Ruth Beechick
This article was originally published in the Jul/Aug 2010 issue of Home School Enrichment Magazine.
Learn more at www.HomeSchoolEnrichment.com
