Young children spend their days discovering the world around them. A squirrel in the window bird feeder is studied with interest. An airplane overhead or even the weave of trees can cause a joyful excitement. A small flower hidden in the brush is an amazing new discovery. They know how to slow down and really see the world around them in a way we’ve forgotten. Adults have a hard time remembering what it was like to live in the present moment and see the world as new. Yet our children do it naturally, and many artists envy their unique vision.
Surrounding Children with Beauty and Nature
Children have a natural understanding and appreciation of beauty, and as Montessorians we try to feed this. Our classrooms are decorated with visual art and photographs. We try to include sculpture and beautiful furniture. Flowers and real plants are a mainstay. The classroom materials are as new looking and fresh as we can make them. This beauty attracts the child to the work, and encourages him or her to care for the materials gently.
Artist Julia Cameron encourages would-be artists to “fill the well.” By surrounding yourself with beauty and nature, you can fill your creative well with these images. This is a necessary activity for all artists, she says. When we surround our children with beautiful art and images, we encourage their aesthetic senses. This is the basis for future creativity and the development of an appreciation for all kinds of art: musical or visual. Montessori, when asked whether her schools create artists said, “We can help a child to develop an eye that sees, a hand that obeys, and a soul that feels.”
We try to give children experiences through all of their senses. Very young children often explore with their mouths. Scientists have told us that we are born with especially sensitive mouths that are able to feel volume, shape, and texture. Young children absorb this information and are able to find the same object later, just by mouthing it. As children start walking and using their hands, they are able to explore even more. They are especially fascinated by the texture of things. How the paint feels on their hands and arms is often more important to them than the visual image on the paper. The feel of running water and soap, the texture of clay, or the feel of a certain brick on the wall can fascinate. Under age three especially, children are gathering sense impressions of their world, whether through touch, taste, smell, hearing or sight.
In discussing visual art activities in the classroom, we are only looking at one way children are exploring art. The toddler classroom features painting, clay work, scribbling, and chalk activities. Each of these individual activities chosen by the child is laid out with a minimum of tools. Clay is worked with one’s hands rather than with clay tools at this age. The painting easel and the scribbling box have only one color of paint or one color of crayon at a time, usually a primary color.
Talking to Children About Their Art
In the classroom, we focus on the artistic process not the product. For a child under three, once the work is done and a few minutes have passed, he doesn’t even remember that he did it. For parents to exclaim over a painting when he’s picked up from school only confuses him. Children of this age live in the moment. We want the child to enjoy that moment and to do the work for himself. Thus we don’t ask the child what they were painting or exclaim how lovely it is, we merely say, “You seem to be enjoying painting today.” If we say that we love her painting, the child might think we will love her if she paints another one. Then she is doing the work for us, and not out of her own desire.
It is also important not to attach adult values to children’s paintings. A red painting doesn’t mean your child is angry, but merely that we might have been out of blue that day. The child is rarely painting a “dog” or a “snake” but merely exploring what the paint does on the paper or how to use the space of the paper. A small blotch of paint in the lower right hand corner does not mean your child isn’t finished but that he is just painting in the lower right hand corner right now. Rhonda Kellogg was one of the first to talk about children’s patterns with paint and crayons, and how they develop over time. Children scribble a certain way depending on their age and development. They also place the scribbles on the page in a certain way. They are exploring what happens if we hit the paper roughly with the paintbrush or if we glide it smoothly. Art at this age is more about the exploration of the medium than any desire to represent something he’s seen.
Developing your Child’s Creativity Naturally
Children in the Toddler Community explore each art medium on their own time schedule according to their own interests. A special art teacher might have the same project planned for everyone, and may have a specific desired outcome or product. Thus, there is no need of them in the Toddler Community. A toddler who is interested in exploring clay may have little or no interest in painting at that moment. Once the child is finished shaping the clay, he puts it back in the bucket for the next person. He doesn’t have any interest in what he made, but only in the experience of doing it. So we offer him a chance to experience these media whenever he wants. Giving the children the opportunity to “fill their wells” with natural and man-made beauty creates the passion and the creativity that, as adults, we often try to recapture.
Throw away the coloring books! We want our children to think outside the box and color outside the lines! Give them interesting papers with texture and color, and a little paint or a crayon, and they will develop their own artistic sensibilities.
Children watch and imitate the adults around them. If you want your child to be creative, you need to be creative yourself and show them that you value creativity in others. How about a visit to a children’s museum or to a small art gallery? How about stopping to admire the pansies by the sidewalk? Or lying in the grass watching the clouds roll by? What kind of artwork do you have on your walls at home? These are the ways we can help our children develop their creativity and learn to appreciate the art and creativity of others.