Creativity is the Key, Not Perfection

I’ve had students over the years whose parents wanted perfection. Yet, the way three year olds learn is by experimenting. The more they try new things, the more they learn. Even when they create things that seem wrong to you, it is important to allow them creative expression.

One of our projects each year is a self-image picture. The child looks in a mirror and tells us what color his eyes and hair are, and how many eyes, eyelashes, nose, and mouth he has. We then give him an oval shape to serve as his face, and he creates his image. One mother approached me after viewing the self-image pictures that were hanging in the hall.

“My son put his eye where his mouth should be,” she said. “Why didn’t you fix that?”

I explained to her that the process in making the picture was more important than the finished product. To make his picture, her son, Bobby, had to cut out the circles for the eyes, use scissors to fringe the eyelashes, glue them onto the face and then draw the nose and mouth. He then chose the color yarn that he wanted for his hair and attached that to his head. There were many skills involved in this, including correctly grasping a scissor and cutting, holding a crayon, gluing and coloring. I did ask Bobby to look in the mirror one more time.

“Is that where your eyes are?” I asked him.
“They are today,” he said laughing.

For whatever reason, Bobby was in a silly mood that day. He knew where his eyes belonged, but he felt like putting one eye near his mouth. Maybe we had a budding modern artist on our hands! Because Bobby did all of the cutting, gluing, and coloring, we allowed him to be creative and complete his own interpretation of his face. By that time, he was much more interested in playing with the toy truck.

His mother felt that we should have made him fix it.
She said, “But compared to all the other pictures hanging in the hall, Bobby’s looks stupid.”

“Maybe you have the next Picasso on your hands,” I replied. “What is important in this project is the process of cutting, coloring and gluing. These activities all use fine motor skills and you can see that Bobby did an excellent job. I am sure that he knows where his eyes belong on his face, but if he wants to be creative, we prefer not to discourage him.”

I do remember years earlier when I was the mother in the hallway comparing my children’s artwork to that of their peers. It is easy to get caught up in the minutiae of the finished product. Does my child cut as well as the others? Is my son behind the curve?

Yet, the more I have worked with different children, the more I value their individualism and creativity. In preschool, kids are experimenting with different mediums often for the first time. Sometimes, just peeling a sticker off its backing is a difficult task in itself. To observe children using their imaginations in their artwork is a beautiful thing.

Developing Fine Motor Skills in Art: Process Not Product

Summer is the perfect time to create projects with your kids, all the while helping them develop stronger fine motor skills through toddler art. Though you want them to do you proud when you hang them on the fridge, keep in mind that it's not the finished product that's important. There are three basic goals children should achieve when making any project: 1) be creative, 2) learn about using different mediums, and 3) develop their fine motor skills.

The children in our class create some kind of project every day. Most of the time, we hang their work in the hall for a week or two before sending it home. The students take great pride in their artwork and the parents enjoy seeing what the children have made.

While we offer suggestions regarding how the students might make a particular project, we are not concerned with the finished product. That is secondary to the process of achieving those three goals. My favorite projects are those that encourage so much creativity, that other than using the same medium, no two children’s pictures look anything alike.

Whenever possible, we allow the children to choose the color paper or paint they’d like to use. Of course, there are only so many choices available to them, but this fosters decision making. If we are offering four colors of construction paper, and a particular color runs out, some children must make a second choice. This provides a lesson in not always getting what you want, and forces them to make another decision.

Some children love to make art projects and can spend a full fifteen minutes on their craft. They are meticulous about coloring in the lines, and using colors that make sense to them, such as green trees or a yellow sun. When making the Cat in the Hat’s hat, these students insist that the stripes must be in the correct pattern - red, white, red, white - and they work fastidiously to fill the entire hat.

Other children would much rather be playing than creating. We do our projects individually, with a teacher working with just one or two children at a time. The rest of the kids are enjoying free play throughout the classroom. For some kids, it’s very hard to concentrate on putting stickers on a page, when another child is playing with his favorite truck. So, while every child must make the project of the day, the amount of time he chooses to spend on it is up to him. If a child would much rather be playing, he is likely to scribble all over a picture instead of worrying about coloring in the lines, or he might choose to apply three stickers instead of eight. That’s all fine as long as he completes the task at hand. It is not about the finished product, but the process it took to get there.

So for the remainder of the summer, encourage your child to practice cutting - a very important and difficult skill; coloring - great for fine motor skill development; and being creative. Just don't get hung up on the finished product.