Monday, April 22, 2013

Art making with little hands...




...is a constant in our house. There's lots of crafting too. But we tend not to draw a distinction between the two, because who really cares where art stops and craft begins? Kids certainly don't and nor should they. That's because getting arty in their younger years is as much about developing thinking skills, problem solving and interpreting the world as it is about appreciating and making art. There's much to be said for kids who can think laterally. And seriously, if you can design and make your own blunt nosed, super speedster paper plane, you're going to be a rock star amongst your peers. Although not with your Mum when she's standing knee deep in prototypes. Yep, been there.
So, having been performing this parenting gig for nearly six years now I feel like I can throw around a smidgen of wisdom when it comes to getting kids to think creatively at home. Here goes it...

1. It's best to bundle up your preconceived ideas and expectations and hurl them through the nearest window. Coming from an art teaching background, I had lovely images of me and my kids sitting for hours, all civilised like, around the kitchen table making polite requests to use the Clag while delicately sprinkling glitter with the utmost of decorum. Ahem. Nope. Expect instead to find chaos, frustration and glitter in places you didn't know existed. Then roll with it.

2. Let them go at it independently. Set up a craft area where they can come and go at will, but keep it age appropriate. A two year old won't manage a pom pom single handedly, so save this for shared times. On the other hand, the same two year old with a healthy chunk of blue play dough, all warm, squishy and freshly made, would relish the opportunity to roll, whack and poke without adult guidance. Only step in if you notice half of it is missing and a tell tale blue moustache is present.



3. Keep your eyes on the process, not the outcome. I'm not going to attempt to put this delicately. The stuff kids produce usually looks like rubbish. In fact quite often it IS rubbish. But that robot made out of a Savoury Shapes box, two bottle tops and a piece of tinsel has already done it's job of getting your child thinking creatively. Decisions about how to make the bottle tops stick and where exactly that antenna (tinsel) would be best positioned have already been made. So admire it. Praise it. Display it proudly. Then at some point stealthily slip it into the recycle bin, before you end up up to your neck in cardboard constructions.

4. Keep your own hands off. This is desperately difficult to do. Especially if, like me, you're a bit partial to some crafting yourself. We are biologically programmed to want to help our children. We want to ease their frustrations. We want them to produce something fabulous. But then, is it really theirs if we help too much? Nope. Many a time I've found myself holding the peg doll (or pom pom, or play dough), while the child in question is MIA. By all means lend a hand when asked, but if your child has wandered off and you haven't realised? You're probably helping too much.

5. Don't discount the value of recycled materials. Save bottle tops and boxes, collect autumn leaves, use lentils and pasta from the pantry and collect fabric scraps. Any parent of a kinder kid would support me when I say kids are prolific artists when given the opportunity. So in order to keep up the supplies, it's best to keep it cheap.


5a. BUT, when it comes to formal formal art supplies, give them the good stuff. I still keenly feel the frustration of childhood art making using bad art materials. In my mind I would have visions of vast fairy tale landscapes in a kaleidoscope of colours, while in front of me was a pulpy piece of paper with some vague, washed out colours painfully extracted from a tin of insipid kiddie watercolours using a bendy nylon brush. Such disappointment. Then there were the cheap crayons with no particular colour to them other than on the label. The pencils which fell to bits when sharpened and the plasticine so hard it was better used as a projectile in battles with my brother. So, stop buying plastic crap from the toy shop, destined for landfill and invest in some half reasonable paints, pencils, pastels, crayons, felt tipped markers, glue and tape for your kids. They'll use them more than anything Fisher Price has to offer and you'll get something to cover your ugly fridge with as a result. Win win.



4 comments:

  1. Love this post! And definitely agree with using good quality supplies. Any suggestions of where to buy such supplies (I am in Ballarat)?

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  2. great post. it is hard to be hands off some times in the process of making art.... but the restraint pays off with confident children who learn when enough is enough!

    although i love the idea of crafting with pantry supplies it does become a moral struggle when people are starving and i am gluing actual food to paper... you know what i mean?

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  3. Great art supplies are best sourced form the local art shop. For me, also in Ballarat, that means Radmac. Some half decent markers and Derwents pencils are available in most of the big places. Big W, Target etc.
    Regarding the food issue, it is a conflict of interests. But so is spending money on anything unnecessary, including great art supplies. We've just got to keep doing the best we can where we are. To stop making art wouldn't solve world hunger, but donating some money might help.

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  4. Oh dear, apologies for the typos in my comment. It seems I don't have the same editing capabilities within this little box!

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