Snowflakes

This morning was greeted by my little Mr pulling out a dinosaur book saying he had resaearch to do.  He opened the book at a protoceratops and wanted to draw it, we were both excited when we remembered Bix from Dinotopia was a protoceratops (Joy!).  He wasn't sure where to begin with his drawing and frequently I find myself offering too much information and he loses ownership of his project so I brought out a great bit of children's art from his room, How to Draw a Dragon.  I started him off with a big egg shaped body and deliberately stepped away. 
Today his inspiration was falling like snowflakes and each idea unique and beautiful.  He ran and grabbed a children's encyclopedia and searched through until he found the page on snowflakes.  So snowflakes it was.  I am looking forward to helping him turn these into little decorations.

Cooperative Instinct

I have a child in a Montessori school and try to absorb as much of the method as I can to better understand the education my child is getting.  I spend time at the school, involve myself with decision making processes (short of trying to become a member on the board),  try to build relationships with other parents for the ties this helps build between our children.  I am continually coming across opinion based literature which states a belief that Montessori children exhibit these special traits that people thought impossible from such young children like cooperation and responsibility.  The fundamentalism behind these ideas that Maria Montessori somehow unearthed this capacity is astonishing to me.  Human societies have grown to their magnificent capacity and capability through cooperation and early exposure to responsibility placed on the shoulders of the young and strong.  The Montessori method is indeed a great revolutionary approach from the place we have arrived at in modern times, where we try to protect the child from any consideration outside of imagination and play, to what I believe is the detriment of their ability to care for themselves.  It is at face value easier to tell a child to go and play so that you can achieve a task than it is to involve them but in my experience it is a much happier child and environment that takes that bit of extra time to involve the child by given them a task they can do to feel they are helping and achieving.

Men can nurture, cook and clean, women can do complicated mathematical equations and children can be responsible and in fact flourish with responsibility.  This is not an exclusively Montessori domain.  I would hope that the approach of gentle and respectful parenting with delegated responsibility to the level of the child will become a wide spread parenting methodology, not needing the label of Montessori which I increasingly feel is bandied about like a social panacea.  At the school I see an environment where some children thrive and others are spoken down to by their peers as if they are at a lower level to them.  I had my son tell me that one of his school friends finally liked him because when he asked she said he was allowed to hold the class pet.  Why should one child control another child's access to anything in the classroom?  While waiting for the child led cafe to open I saw one girl ask another student to watch this one boy because she did not think he could be trusted not to eat any of the food.  What gives one child the right over another to pass prejudicial judgment of his ability to control himself?  By granting this role of student aids student it seems they have somehow lost the message of cooperation and instead fallen into the less attractive social behavior of denigration and bossiness. 

To me the Montessori method is a wonderful basis for a new approach to learning which gives the child more of a chance to embrace a love of learning, this is not always the case in practice but it does seem to aspire to this end.  Unfortunately the teachings of Maria Montessori are outdated and too readily followed like the word of an educational prophet who cannot be questioned.  She was a scientist and as such I'm sure could not object to embracing new information on the best way to educate and nurture a love of learning in children.  There is a cooperative instinct amongst children which is too easily destroyed by their experiences with other children and adults.  Once they discover a sense of ownership it is a matter of leading by example, hopefully good example.  Even in the parent toddler program on one of my first visits I had a parent tell my daughter to move along because her son was playing with that station.  It seems to be an approach that travels with them.  In the classroom children are discouraged from grouping together to accomplish tasks, rather they can work alone or in small collectives of two or three.  I can see how this would make the class manageable but not how this aids in a cooperative spirit amongst the children.

Montessori is what the community of families make it.  In this way I suppose it is like a church or religion.  If the family do not subscribe holistically to the preaching of Maria Montessori it is a more difficult experience for the child to assimilate as they are completely new to the very stringent rules they are expected to follow within the classroom.  Where there is an aspiration to change for the better there will be growth, where there is a belief that perfection has been attained development will stagnate.

Advent bunting and alphabet tiles

Inspired by Sew Sweet Violet and her advent bunting.

I cannot remember who gave me the inspiration for these tiles but when I saw their beautiful and whimsical tile I immediately wanted to make them as fridge magnet porcelain tiles.  I had some little help with these.  Two little helps if you count one trying to feed them to the dogs.

Sewing for Children - Free Patterns

This weekend has been filled with sewing.   Both of my little ones have had growth spurts, particularly my little Mr, so it started with a search for boys clothes patterns and ended with four dresses, a pair of super cute box pleat shorts and plans to get around to trying some of these boys clothes patterns and learning screen printing as a collective (team little miss, little mr and me).

Of the resources below I have used Angela of Crafting Zuzzy's beautiful Box Pleat Shorts tutorial with the pattern made from a pair of shorts that fit well.

Here are some great resources for free patterns and tutuorials:

Sewing in No Man's Land	Fantastic range of childrens, womens and miscellaneous patterns. Printable PDFs.
No Big Dill	These are gorgeous tutorials with wonderful ideas for ways to make unique and beautiful clothes for boys and girls.
Crafting Zuzzy	Great easy to follow instructions and tutorials for a range os sewing projects. Love these box pleat shorts.
Oliver + S	A small range of free printable patterns and some downloadable PDF patterns for sale. The free patterns are high quality and easy to print off and use.

Online fabric shops:
Umbrella Prints
Wrapped in Fabric

Halloween - Dressing up and eating sweets

Halloween is my favourite annual celebration, combining dressing up with eating too many sweets, craft, sewing and face painting.  In Australia though trick or treating can be pretty disheartening.   We seem to too readily dismiss it as Americanisation but cheerfully embrace the coca cola version of Santa Claus.  The worst experience we have had so far in Australia was when our oldest was two.  We were living away from family and friends on a six month, which turned into an eighteen month, contract in the Blue Mountains and had been building everyone up to halloween, made or bought costumes and spent the preceding friday night at the Museum Halloween party.   I think we may have been living in the most religious street in Glenbrook, filled with people who seemed very put out by our dressing up and celebrating a heathen holiday.  One neighbour  even slipped religious propaganda into my small child's basket.  It was a cartoon so even if he was an early reader he could still appreciate the message of condemnation.  I could just imagine what that weeks sermon must have been like when they passed around these tragic pamphlets for participants to hand out at Halloween, helping to open the eyes of the wicked trick or treating children to the error of their ways.  The Annual Haunted Museum Halloween Party, from the spooky trail to the hidden entrance, to the 'Night of the Museum' inspired monkey and alligator handling when we got inside.  This was a great night even though I had a piercing on my lip that was grossly infected and gave my wicked witch costume the added special effect of pussy, bulging sore lip and spooky red eye that not even latex can achieve. 

This year we have opened our little heathens eyes to even more harmless Halloween fun.  Pumpkin carving!

Happy Halloween!

Teaching Art to Children - Drawing exercises

There are a number of exercises that I have derived from art teaching methodologies for teaching art to young children.  One thing I hope to always be consistent with is a drawing exercise in the class.

Caveat to all of these is that there should never be any pressure or expectation.  Your child may just not be ready for this, whether it is confidence or ability to hold a pencil or brush, concentration or simply lack of desire to draw, your child can be engaged in the building blocks to drawing.  Fine motor skill builders like singing songs with finger actions like incy-wincy spider, use of scissors, gluing, felt image play, collage, pipettes.  I used to call my son an installation artist because he seemed to not be interested at all in drawing and lost interest in painting but he loved to take out whatever he could find in the cupboards and create these great installations with piles of stuff, purposefully arranged.  He also never lost his love for craft and now, out of the blue he is amazing at drawing.

Here are overviews of the exercises.

Mirror image  This exercise involves creating a grid on the page and placing increasing complex shapes in the left hand column for the child to copy into the right hand column.  As I am drawing with very young children this involves creating a shape or simple shape grouping image with at least the first image demonstrating the intention and giving visual direction with a dotted line example in the right hand box.  The shape can be as simple as a triangle, building on previous lesson printouts by combining that triangle with other shapes to make a more complex image.

Simple Shape exploration  Monart describes a shape alphabet, which condenses every object down to the sum of it's parts for the purpose of artistic reproduction.  This exercise will use different shapes elements from this alphabet and mediums to freely engage the child in making marks on paper with different art mediums under minimal instruction.  Swirls with water colour, lines with different density of graphite, squares, dots, zig zags, circles, angles.   Slowly introducing more elements of the alphabet until the child can easily reproduce any one element under instruction.

Simple shape grouping  This exercise involves talking the group or individual child through creation of a particular image through detailed description of the simple shape elements that can be used in its construction.  To do this, there is no need to use a prop or example image, just ensure you are describing something the students are all familiar with.  Starting with a face or child is perfect because it a subject they are all familiar with.  Build from the top or bottom, like the stacking of different shaped blocks.  Describe the two boxes with round corners lying down on their sides for feet, the two lines coming out of each one for the legs, the long circle for the body, the two lines coming out of the body for the neck, the circle stacked on these two lines for the head.   Step the child through as many steps as they can tolerate to create an object.  A house, tree or bird can be an easy beginning as the steps to form the shape are fewer.  Combine with mirror image exercise to combine simple shapes together to form an object, such as the squares and circles of a simple house drawing.

Critical observation  There are many ways to engage a child in critical thinking about the world and ideas.  This exercise is aimed at getting young children to think critically about the shape elements of an object, it's attributes and proportions.  Choose an object in theme for the class or flavour of the day for your child.  Explore it together, then have the children explain the item to you as you draw it on a large piece of paper or card.  This is an element of art that I have always found myself doing very naturally, those elements I rarely draw I need to dedicate intent to breaking down critically, for me this is landscape and cityscape.  I have always found myself critically exploring the human face and I love drawing and painting people, dreamscapes and animals but landscapes, although I love nature, I have typically not used as my subject matter and have deliberately spent time in critical observation to be able to work more freely while I try and expand my ability.

Visualisation  There is a great Monart process for approaching a drawing or painting exercise at the beginning of class.  This is an exercise to help an art student approach a blank piece of paper which can appear very daunting if you place pressure on yourself.  I do not know if young children really feel this intimidation as they all just seem happy to enjoy the process rather than stress about the outcome but I think this is still a wonderful approach to calming the child and helping them to visualise an image or idea for an image.  Have the child place their elbows on the table and cup their hands over their eyes, without placing any pressure on their eyeballs as you do not want to hurt or damage them.  This allows for a nice internal blank canvas and a calm dark space for them to work without any constraint placed on them by ability to hold or control their pencil or paint brush.  Give them this time to spend thinking about what they would like to draw and then let them loose to create whatever they wish without pressure to reproduce what they have been visualising, instead hopefully this has acted as inspiration to draw with even more enthusiasm.

NGA Kids Gallery - WordArt

 

Word Art is even greater for a child to enjoy, remove the preconception from the appreciation of the word meaning and you have nothing but the shape, colour and placement.   For a young child word art might be missing intended depth but brings a Pop Art like appreciation for design and beauty in the every day things we are surrounded by.