Teaching Art

Teaching a child to draw is a matter of two things - the child's willingness to listen and understand. Not all children grasp the concept of drawing. Personality has a great deal to do with the bend and stretch of art. Personalities that are particularly commanding or distracted or even very very reticent will not always take to the instruction of art. The teacher should be someone the child respects.

Sometimes the best way of teaching is to begin by doing - the adult that is. Whenever an adult is employed at something that seems to amuse the adult, children by instinct gravitate toward the busy adult and want to "do it too." Sitting down with a box of crayons and paper and drawing is the invitation of a lifetime, and kids know it.

But when the child asks to play, the rules must be set. "Yes, you may play with me, and here is your paper and here is one crayon to start."

"But I want all the crayons."

"You may have one. You can only use one at a time, so you may have one."

"But I want two."

"You may have one."

If tears pour, it's time to put the crayons away for another time. If the child accepts the rule of one crayon, the teaching begins. If there is any struggle on the part of the child to dominate the play over the head of the teacher's rules, that is the signal that the child will not take direction from the adult with the crayons.

"Today we are going to draw a face," says the adult.

"I don't want to."

"Today we are going to draw a face," repeats the adult. "And you are going to begin with an oval like this." And the adult draws an oval.

It's at this point the child must make a decision to learn from the adult or refuse. It is ultimately his choice. The child has several options, and pure personality will dictate success or struggle. Some children will flounce off because they will not give over their own personality to learn. Some children will cry and beg off because they will be afraid they can't do it. And most children will eagerly wait to see what's coming next and be excited to do it well.

Children who are eager to learn - which means letting go and taking direction will do a respectable job of accomplishing a drawing of anything if taken one step at a time. Compliant well behaved children are usually remarkable little artists if shown how.

Children who think they know best will botch their exercises until they mature into listeners simply because one must learn to take direction in life. Listening is the whole goal of early childhood - that the child learns to listen and develops an open personality.

Openness is a learned trait and comes from the parent especially the mother. Openness has at its personality root the ability to stop, look, and listen to what is going on in the room. To put away self for the sake of others and to realize that others in the room have a valid point of view that is not only worthy of respect, but worthy of time to listen.

Children mimic adults. It's painfully apparent when children can't listen or follow directions that they have learned this from the instructive parent - usually the mother. Turning a child around often means turning the parent around first.

With the teaching of art, the teacher's point of view is simply one point of view in the room, and the child has another. The gentle meeting of minds is the goal here. "This is how you do this," and the child mimics the example while developing his or her own design. Drawings don't have to look a particular way. The experience of the exercise will teach the child how to, and the next step is to interpret what has been lovingly taught and to experiment with it so that the child learns.

It's the same with painting and clay and colored paper. There are very simple rules that apply to each craft and once the rules are established - "Hold your brush like this. We are not painting a barn."

"Water, paint, paper."

"Clay must be warmed by your hands."

"We cut with our fingers in the larger scissor hole, and our thumb in the smaller hole, and then we make an open shut them motion wrists strait!"

"You must sit with scissors." The production of art can peacefully and intelligently commence.

Children who listen will go a long way quickly. Then art becomes an enormous exploration, a treasured time when the exploration leaves the materials and crawls up the arm to the brain. It is then, when the rules have been absorbed, that we see what is in the child's mind's eye.