Kids Process Art, How to Teach
By Spramani Elaun
In this blog I want to help you understand what Process Art means when teaching art to young children.
It’s confusing for parents and teachers to know what exactly process art means.
And how to identify if you’re not offering process art experiences.
It comes down to two things:
Should children end their art projects with something pretty and nice to show for their time working on a project?
Or
Should kids spend time creating and learning from exploration and mistakes, leading maybe to artworks
aesthetically pleasing?
In the last 17 years working closely with young children,
I’ve observed how children become creative, and can create new ideas from their own imagination.
I’ve learned very valuable lessons that process art is important to the healthy development of a creative child!
Here’s what process focused art experiences look like.
Process Art
There’s light introductory instructions to how mediums can work or be used.
There’s a variety of samples kids can see how mediums might turn out or different techniques that can be achieved.
Children are encouraged to explore their own original technique.
Children are assured there’s really no way to be wrong in using mediums.
Children know exploration is good and Ok.
Children are inspired to be unique, or original in what ever they attempt to create.
Time for creating can be timeless, meaning they can go back to the same project or exploring from previous art sessions.
This is what process art experiences look like!
Here’s what process art doesn’t look like.
Not Process Art
Now, lets look at what it means to not allow kids to have process art experiences.
You introduce instructions the child must follow step-by-step, with no freedom to create way from instructions.
Children are told the project has a right way and a wrong way.
A goal is set to do the art project the right way by following examples.
If the child’s finished art looks different then the samples, you hint it’s wrong, or they did not follow directions.
If you’re compelled to correct or guide the child to fix it to look like example.
If you discourage the child to be unique and come up with their own way to finishing the art project.
If you discourage the child to not explore the mediums, and stick only to the one technique you introduced.
In this blog I shared with you what Process Art means when teaching art to young children.
I hope this helps you understand and get clarity, I’m always open to questions about my art education topics.
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