Process not product: exploring art with toddlers

For a while now I've been trying to introduce Sofia to creating and working with art materials. So far it's been less than enthusiastic. I was getting a little disheartened with the thought that my daughter might not be into drawing or painting or crafts of any kind. My dad is an artist, as a child I filled my days with drawing and crafting, and then I even got a BFA with an emphasis in Fine Art photography.  So when a month went by with crayons untouched I thought I must be going about this all wrong, and I decided to buy the book First Art by MaryAnn F. Kohl. The first thing she says is with toddlers it's not about the end product but the process. I realized then and there that I was focusing way to much on making an end product: I wasn't allowing Sofia to experience the materials. I would show her the proper way to use say watercolors and then I would constantly insist that if she kept putting her brush in the water after she put the color on, that she would only be painting with water. This kind of talk was really deterring her.

So... Friday morning I got out our roll of paper. I laid a huge piece down on the kitchen floor taping it down with painters tape. I then mixed up some colors, put out some extra materials and told her to go at it with anything she wanted, however she wanted, even if that meant just running around using only her feet to paint.

What I had come to realize is that she is a kinetic learner. She needs to keep moving in order to learn something. Even when she reads a book she always fidgeting and turning pages; of course she would need to explore art in a way that would be comfortable to her. She loved the idea of painting with her feet, which lead to taking all her clothes off and painting with her butt and knees and legs. She had such blast that she requested to paint again this morning. The clean up is not too hard I just grab up all the paper and tear it up and put it in the compost bin. The paint we use is Glob and my own homemade flour paint.

She is now loving the process and so am I. I'll have a review of the book coming up soon. It's so interesting to read and filled with great process-oriented activities.

This in turn has lead me to wanting to know more about art with toddlers. I want to announce that I am going to hold a month-long exploration of toddler art here on the blog in April. Every Monday and Thursday there will be a post dealing with some aspect of toddler art. I'll have guest posts, activity tutorials, a Flickr group to share your toddler's art explorations, and a giveaway or two! I hope to cover process-oriented projects, natural toddler friendly art materials and a bit of art theory for kids. If you are interested in guest posting please e-mail me at kc@kathrynpagano.com. I'm really looking forward to this so I hope you will all join me in April!