There are many tools that we can use to nurture our child’s creativity either at home or in school, such as art and craft, music and movement, role play, story telling or speech and drama. We need to prepare an environments that the children are accessible to those activities easily in order for them to involve in creative pretend play. Today, I’ll share with you how I use art to nurture a girl’s creativity in school!
I have a girl who loves to scribble and color during free time. One day, I gave her a piece of paper with a circle on it. I told her that she can color inside or outside the circle; draw anything such as a mouse or any object that she likes. In order to give her better idea of what I’m trying to tell her, I showed her by drawing a cat’s face using the circle. She was amazed and enjoyed. She drew few lines and then colored within the circle. I continued giving her the same paper in the next two weeks. I can see changes in her ideas. She started to draw nice colorful patterns. She drew circles inside the big circles and color with different colors, she told, “It’s rainbow!”. Last week, I gave her the same paper. “I want to draw my best friend, WY!”. WY is her best girl friend in school. Both of them are inseparable.
First, she colored around the circle. She said, “It’s WY hair.”. I asked her why her hair grow around the face. She just said, “It’s like uncle!”! She put in the ideas of beard in her picture. Then she drew two big round eyes with two smaller circles in each eye. This is a new discovery too as it’s her first time she drew pupils in the eyes. She drew a vertical stroke representing the nose. Then she drew a horizontal line across the circle representing the mouth. She drew two strokes on the side of the circle representing the arms. Lastly she drew two vertical strokes below the circle representing the legs. This is also the first time she drew out of the circle! I asked if she would like to put on some lipstick for her friend. She did! She used pink color pencils and scribbles below the mouth (horizontal line). She has completed a portrait of her best friend with her own imagination and creativity! Most of all, she is so confident and enjoyed the process of her creation!
By giving her continuous practice and opportunity, she is able to expand her creativity. Few new discoveries are seen in her latest work as I mentioned. Below are some guidelines for promoting children’s creativity through art :
- do NOT draw for the child
- do NOT use templates
- do NOT ask the child to trace
- do NOT ask children to color in
- do NOT ask the child to copy your model step by step
- DO give the child real first hand experiences, such as looking at a tree, flowers etc.
- DO give the child opportunities to represent things and keep hold of their experiences, e.g. by making a model rabbit using a cardboard and cotton wools.
- DO encourage lots of different ideas.
Enjoy the fun in nurturing our child’s creativity!
