AuntyB: Art brings richness to your child's day. Purely tactile learning at this age, they experience feel of the media and develop eye/hand coordination. The wonders of the process are intriguing.
Be sure to closely supervise your child to prevent all of those artistic efforts from spilling over on to walls, floors and other non-art places.
A separate small table and chair with blank paper that extends to all table edges is good for crayons. Start with three colors in a box. Toddlers usually choose one color for the complete work, making scribbling movements back and forth across the page.
The big arm movements and learning to hold the crayon are the sole interest. (Your toddler will color from edge to edge and right on to the table if it is not covered.) Eventually mastery to keep the work on the paper develops along with fine motor skills.
This activity has a beginning and an end. Your child will walk away when finished.
AuntyB Hint:
- Tape paper to table to keep it from sliding around during boisterous arm movements.
- Toddlers need normal-sized crayons. The larger ones are too big for their small fingers.
- When the activity is complete, take away the used paper and replace with a clean sheet, which invites more work.
Children are not ready for coloring books until much later. Coloring inside a line is not important at this point as the learning of the process is taking place. It could be that coloring book pages inhibit the highly creative mind's expression even later. (Comments, anyone?)
Grandmama: Though I've always thought of my sister, AuntyB, as the artist, I have recently acquired that designation myself. Many of the principles she mentions above are just the ones that my university professors had to reawaken in student artists like me.
Every drawing teacher, it seems, must release that child within. In classes, left to themselves, most students use tiny finger motions to manipulate the pencil on a drawing that uses just the center of the page.
By the end of the first drawing course, large arm motions and filling the space have, once again, become the comfortable, normal practice.
I asked my mentor Nick deVries, art professor at the University of Houston, Clear Lake, "What age is best to start little ones in art?"
He replied, "Three years old is too late."
Seize the moment. Become a child again. Feel your whole body; fill all the space! When you're finished, walk away.
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