subject: Art Supplies And Children Just Go Together [print this page] My mantra for children has always been, "process is more important than product." Meaning, it doesn't matter what it looks like in the end, did you have fun making it? Drawing it? Or forming it? Those are the only questions that really matter. I have taught art in the schools for years and occasionally I get a teacher who is impossible to work with as they can't separate "grades" from creativity. They want to grade the children's art.
Nothing is more stifling to a child than to think their creations are being judged by someone else. They can produce nothing in this environment except rigid, stiff products not entitled to be called art. Art has to come from within, it has to be bred in the womb of imagination and wonder, it has to paint a pumpkin pink with purple stripes, not a graded orange pumpkin with green stem. What a boring world that sort of education produces and stifled and uninterested learners.
Children learn to love art when they are surrounded by endless art supplies, some come from the store like joint craft easels, mobile easels, market boards, crayons, paints, finger paints, brushes, paper, but other come from the stuff of life, for example; corn, dried beans, rice, scraps of fabric, jar lids and rings. Our youngest boy used to take apart old useless computers and make collages from the parts. He would make trains, abstracts and contemporary designs from the pieces. His imagination would run wild and the process brought much enjoyment. It is all going to end up in the garbage eventually so stop worrying about the end result and let children enjoy the big messy process.
For a great time, find a four year old and let them drive a toy car through some chocolate pudding, then drive it over a large piece of newsprint of other large paper. It doesn't get better than that. tThe wheels of their little brains start churning. Our children all had easels in their rooms for quiet drawing and sketching. What a joy to a child. Children and art, art and children, as perfect as peanut butter and jelly or peanut butter and eggs!
by: Art Gib
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