0

Hi,

Thank you for downloading this report.

There is one thing we all agree on.

Everyone wants smart kids. Parents, teachers, grandparents and even the
kids themselves want to be smart.

Parents want smart kids, teachers want smart students and of course
grandparents want smart kids that they can gloat over.

Everyone that wants smart kids also want what’s best for kids in every way.

They want them to have great self esteem, be happy, be kind, thinking
individuals and of course to be successful and do it all effortlessly.

So what does crafts or art for kids have to do with this?

Good question! I’m glad you asked.

If you are reading this report I think that I can safely assume that you are
involved in Early Childhood Education in some way. You’re either a teacher,
director, parent or grandparent who has been involved with kids and crafts for a
while and are intrigued by the idea that crafts may actually make kids smarter.

Another fact that I think I can safely assume, is that the crafts you have
been familiar with until now has been the traditional, copycat crafts as I call it,
that you see all over the web.

So the first question we really have to ask is “Are all crafts really good for
our children? Believe it or not, and I’m sure you believe it; many people don’t
even think to ask this question.

They take it for granted that doing traditional ―copycat‖ crafts must be
beneficial for kids’ development since most preschools do them as a matter of
course. The Internet is filled with crafts websites, crafts activities are a mainstay
of birthday parties, and anyway, don’t kids just love getting their hands on
crayons and paste?

Well, sure they do, and that’s the way it should be! But our kids shouldn’t
be subjected to what I call copycat cat arts and crafts because that’s what it
makes them into…copycat robots– and that’s precisely what some educators and
parents are doing when they ply their children with crafts of the ―paint-by-
number‖ style.

1
 Proponents of the traditional, copycat way of doing crafts claim that it
teaches the children direction-following skills and helps them develop their fine
motor skills. That may be so. But at the very same time, it also robs kids of many
more basic, vital skills, which we will discuss below.

I want it to be very clear that we are speaking here about traditional crafts
FOR CHILDREN. Adult crafts are a completely different topic, which we will
address later on.

So what is wrong, anyway, with traditional arts and

crafts?
Think about it for a minute. Aren’t most traditional arts and crafts projects
. . . copycat projects? These cute little ideas, straight from some adult’s
imagination, encourage children to follow exact directions and deny them the
thrill of creativity and experience of autonomy.

Most traditional children’s crafts are . . .

1) Conceived of by grownups, and are thus

2) Copies of a grownup’s model, resulting in
3) Projects that all look exactly alike, which are therefore
4) Not at all age appropriate.

Take any one of the projects that your child has brought home
from school, that you’ve seen on the Internet, or that are sold in prepackaged
form in any art supplies store, and you will notice that:

 There is usually a picture to be copied or a model that the finished project is

supposed to look like.
 There are no choices to be made (except, perhaps, for color) and thus no room
for initiative.
 No thinking or problem solving skills are required or developed.
 Creativity is absent from the activity.

All of this saps your child of some of the most basic skills she/he needs to grow
and develop to her or his maximum potential.

When kids’ only experience in childhood is with traditional arts and

crafts:

1. They end up feeling really badly about themselves because they sense
they’re not trusted to create on their own.

2
 2. They lose their initiative because they are trained to wait for directions
and to feel that they’ll do it wrong if they start on their own.

3. They lose confidence since only the teacher’s model is considered

correct

4. They absorb the message that they are ― just no good in art‖ and
grow into the adults who say ―Oh, me? I can’t even draw a straight line!‖

These feelings are usually subconscious at young ages and most kids can’t
verbalize them. But you’ll often hear kids saying things like ―I hate art‖ or ―Help
me, I don’t know what to do‖ or ―Hers is better than mine.‖ Sadly, remarks like
these are all a direct outgrowth of their arts and crafts experiences.

But you don’t have to feel discouraged, because there is a better way, a
wonderful, educational way of doing art with kids. But before we present this
method of our art approach, it’s important to have some psychological
background on how children develop, which will set the stage for our approach to
kids’ crafts and their art in general.

3
 Some Background Theory

In order to understand how our minds and those of our children work, we
need to consult and learn from the expert researchers of child development.
Psychologists study the human mind, while child development psychologists
study specifically how children’s minds develop. What follows is a very short
synopsis of the findings of two very well known child psychologists that shed light
on the workings of our children’s minds.

Jean Piaget was a world renowned child psychologist whose field of

study was how children come to know, i.e., to gain life knowledge
intellectually. (or cognitively)

While working in his lab over the years, he became intensely interested in
how children actually think. He noticed the difference between answers given by
younger children and those given by their older peers, and realized that it was not
because the younger children were any less intelligent, but because they thought
differently than the older ones.

Piaget set about performing numerous experiments with young children to

learn how they come to acquire their store of information and the stages they go
through to acquire it.

From his testing, Piaget identified the following four stages in children’s
cognitive (intellectual) development and the period of life in which each will
normally occur:

1. Sensory motor stage - Infancy

2. Pre-operational stage - Toddler and Early Childhood
3. Concrete operational - Elementary and Early Adolescence
4. Formal operational state - Adolescence and Adulthood

Through thousands of experiments and studies, Piaget discovered that

children learn best by actually doing and working out problems on their own,
actually working through solutions. And he learned that it is mainly through
concrete experiences that they will develop to the next level.
By spoon feeding the children they will learn only facts not how to discover
solutions on their own.

We know from Piaget how important sensory experiences are and how
much
better children can integrate knowledge and book learning when they have
concrete examples to tie into the theoretical.

I can actually bring you a real live example from my own experience.

4
 ―I was never good in math in school and it followed me into adulthood.
When
I was in graduate school I was taking a class called Math for teachers. We were
using manipulatives to learn how to teach kids fractions and we were adding and
subtracting the fractions. As I played around with the stuff all of a sudden things
that I had struggled with so many years before suddenly became clear because I
had the concrete materials right in front of me to manipulate.‖(How sad when
teachers don’t realize what children need to learn better)

So from Piaget we know….children learn through sensory

experiences
and handling many objects. For more on Piaget see
http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/piaget.htm

Another significant figure in the area of children’s development was Erik

Erickson. He was a well known psychologist who discovered the eight stages of
social and emotional development of man starting with infants.

According to Erickson the socialization process consists of eight stages

of
man. His eight stages were formulated through wide ranging experience in
psychotherapy. Each stage is regarded by Erickson as a ―psychosocial crisis‖ that
demands resolutions before the next stage can be satisfactorily negotiated. Just
as a building cannot stand on shaky foundation so to the child must learn to
manage each crisis before being able to mange the next one.

The 8 stages of man:

1. Trust vs. Mistrust (Infancy) (birth t-18 months)

Erickson also referred to infancy as the Oral Sensory Stage (as anyone might
who watches a baby puts everything in her mouth) where the major emphasis is
on the mother's positive and loving care for the child, with a big emphasis on
visual contact and touch.

If we pass successfully through this period of life, we will learn to trust that
life is basically okay and have basic confidence in the future. If we fail to
experience trust and are constantly frustrated because our needs are not met, we
may end up with a deep-seated feeling of worthlessness and a mistrust of the
world in general. Incidentally, many studies of suicides and suicide attempts
point to the importance of the early years in developing the basic belief that the
world is trustworthy and that every individual has a right to be here.

Not surprisingly, the most significant relationship is with the maternal parent,
or whoever is our most significant and constant caregiver.

5
 2. Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (Ages 18 mo-3)

During this stage we learn to master skills for ourselves. Not only do we learn
to walk, talk and feed ourselves, we are learning finer motor development as well
as the much appreciated toilet training. Here we have the opportunity to build
self-esteem and autonomy as we gain more control over our bodies and acquire
new skills, learning right from wrong. And one of our skills during the "Terrible
Two's" is our ability to use the powerful word "NO!"

It may be pain for parents, but it develops important skills of the will. It is also
during this stage, however, that we can be very vulnerable. If we're shamed in the
process of toilet training or in learning other important skills, we may feel great
shame and doubt of our capabilities and suffer low self-esteem as a result. The
most significant relationships are with parents.

3. Initiative vs. Guilt (Ages 3-5)

During this period we experience a desire to copy the adults around us and
take initiative in creating play situations. We make up stories with Barbie's and
Ken's, toy phones and miniature cars, playing out roles in a trial universe,
experimenting with the blueprint for what we believe it means to be an adult. We
also begin to use that wonderful word for exploring the world—"WHY?" The most
significant relationship is with the basic family. But outsider educators have a
great impact in encouraging initiative.

4.Industry vs. Inferiority (6-12)

During this stage, often called the Latency, we are capable of learning,
creating and accomplishing numerous new skills and knowledge, thus developing
a sense of industry. This is also a very social stage of development and if we
experience unresolved feelings of inadequacy and inferiority among our peers,
we can have serious problems in terms of competence and self-esteem. As the
world expands a bit, our most significant relationship is with the school and
neighborhood. Parents are no longer the complete authorities they once were,
although they are still important.

5. Identity vs. Role Confusion (12-18)

Up to this stage, according to Erickson, development mostly depends upon
what is done to us. From here on out, development depends primarily upon
what we do. And while adolescence is a stage at which we are neither a child nor
an adult, life is definitely getting more complex as we attempt to find our own
identity, struggle with social interactions, and grapple with moral issues Our
task is to discover who we are as individuals separate from our family of origin

6
and as members of a wider society. Unfortunately for those around us, in this
process many of us go into a period of
withdrawing from responsibilities, which Erickson called a "moratorium." And if
we are unsuccessful in navigating this stage, we will experience role confusion
and upheaval

A significant task for us is to establish a philosophy of life and in this

process we tend to think in terms of ideals, which are conflict free, rather than
reality, which is not. The problem is that we don't have much experience and find
it easy to substitute ideals for experience. However, we can also develop strong
devotion to friends and causes. It is no surprise that our most significant
relationships are with peer groups.

(The next three are adult stages that we will not go into)
6. Intimacy vs. Isolation
7. Generativity vs. Stagnation
8. Ego Integrity vs. Despair
For more on Erickson see http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/genpsyerikson.html

Of course many of the stages are not exact and a five year old can still be
struggling with issues of a 3 yr old. Since children learn new skills at every age
and stage, and have different needs at every age, they therefore struggle anew at
each stage with different conflicts.

However, a child whose needs have been adequately met sees the world as
a safe place feels a sense of trust and is ready to deal with his next stage of
development in a functional manner.

When children are allowed to grow, create and learn according to their
developmental age, they gain a healthy sense of self - worth, which leads them to
feel that they can succeed in any endeavor they may set out to do.
From the findings of both Piaget, and Erickson we learn that some crucial
points regarding children’s learning and developmental needs to be developed at
a young age.

We can determine that there are certain very important skills we need our
children to develop in order to be successful in school and in life. Skills in life
need to be developed at the right time. And the time to develop the skills we will
be talking about is in the preschool and early elementary years. If we miss this
time, it’s extremely difficult to develop the proper skills at a later time.

For example: A child that is often given a lot of criticism will feel really
poorly about herself and it will take much longer to accept herself in later years.
It’s like hardening clay. When it’s soft and malleable you can form what you want
with it and it will dry the way you formed it. Once dry, however, it is much, much
harder to redo.

7
 How these concepts can be applied to Arts and
Crafts:
Now that you are more knowledgeable of what skills children need to
develop than hopefully we can analyze all of the activities they do to see if they fit
these criteria. Plus we can understand why traditional arts and crafts does not fit
these criteria
As we want the activities we give our children to fit their needs we know
that the art activities we give should have the following components.

1. Help the children develop a good self esteem.

2. Allow them to think and solve problems.
3. Let them grow wise as they make choices by taking initiative.
4. Allow them to develop a sense of autonomy and independence.
5. Give them room for their creativity to blossom.

Applying the ideas of Piaget and Erickson:

(There are other well known developmental psychologist like Dewey, Froebel,
Vygotzky etc who are not included for brevity’s sake)

From the finding of Erickson and Piaget there are five main categories that
we have deduced children need to work on.

1- A good self esteem – A good self esteem is vital for children. It is what
makes them feel that they can succeed at anything they set out to learn or
accomplish.

2- Critical thinking skills - The older a child becomes, the more s/he is
called upon to use critical thinking skills in school (especially in areas like math).

3- Initiative- As children grow, they need to learn to make all types of

choices. This requires the confidence and the experience of knowing that they are
capable of making the right choices and that if their choices are not right, they
can always correct them. This gives them the initiative to make many choices.

4- A sense of independence - Without allowing children to do whatever

they want, children need to gain autonomy to help them become responsible
human beings, which will invariably help them succeed throughout their school
years. (and life) without being tied to an adults apron strings.

5 -Creativity – Creativity is a very crucial skill for kids to develop especially in

today’s day and age where creativity is at a premium. I read a book recently that
quoted a study that said even prestigious medical schools are giving art classes to
hone their student’s powers of observation.

8
 Obviously traditional arts and crafts is sorely lacking as we
discussed before and it is a wonder why so many adults give their
children and students craft after craft when their benefits are so
doubtful

To give the benefit of the doubt I would like to suggest why this has
come to be before discussing the alternatives.

 Our society likes success, winning and finished products. Many children’s
things do not look perfect enough for society.

 Lack of knowledge of what’s wrong with these crafts.

 A feeling of helplessness as to what can be an alternative.

 Thinking that by giving children projects that make them

follow directions they are learning important direction
following skills.

 Assuming that anything having to do with coloring and pasting must be

creative

 Inability to let children be children

 Worried about others will say if the artwork looks messy.

 Thinking that the only skills young children need to develop

are fine motor skills

Now that we know what is wrong we can discuss what is

developmentally correct for children.

The answer that is Educational Art.

This is a term that I coined to explain how art needs to be educational in that
it doesn’t have to TEACH them subject matter but it makes them better learners.
What can be more educational than that?

Educational art aside from making them better learner will help children

 Develop a great self esteem

9
  Learn to think and solve problems
 Begin to take initiative
 Learn to choose
 Develop a sense of autonomy and independence unless severely squashed
in other areas
 Have their creativity expand and expand

If they do lots of process art they can also gain an appreciation for art and
culture which will expand to the rest of their life and learning and will help them
throughout life.

A very important book came out a not that long time by a fellow named
Daniel Pink. The name of his book is called ― A Whole New Mind‖

In brief this book discusses the changes in society that are taking place to the
phenomenon of outsourcing.

For years Mr. Pink says the schools have concentrated on the skills and
studies to encourage left brain thinking because that is where the jobs were. All
of the math and computers and science jobs needed a lot of left brain analytical
thinking.

Outsourcing has changed that all. What an American worker would get paid
$75,000 a year for an overseas outsourcer will now take $15,000 to do the same
exact work.

This means that it is creativity that is now the name of the game and anyone
with the well honed skills of creativity and initiative will be the successful ones of
next generation. You cannot clone creativity.

Note how Wikipedia defines creativity.

Creativity is a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas
concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts.
Creativity is fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight. An
alternative conception of creativeness is that it is simply the act of making something
new.

Now who do you think will far better in this new world of creativity.
Children that have been robot; like making copycat crafts all their lives
Or children that have been allowed to be creative and innovative.

It certainly is something to think about.

10
 Don’t however for a minute mix up adult crafts with
children’s crafts

Adults crafts include many wonderful crafts techniques that cannot be put
into the same classification as children’s crafts.

Paper crafts woodcrafts, stone crafts, leather crafts, flower crafts, ceramic,
metal crafts, the list is long.

Adults involved in these crafts use their creativity and their imagination to
take the particular craft technique they are using to create something new,
unique, and creative. They do not copy other peoples work, they may take ideas
from nature or even some ideas from other works but never are they replicas of
someone else’s ideas.

So why are children encouraged to do so?

Most children’s crafts follow someone else’s model and allow for no
creativity and problem solving skills.

A child that is given educational art will be much more prepared in self
esteem , initiative taking, and creative imagination to develop and create on his
or her own.

Even if children do not pick careers in art the skills they will gain from
educational art will help them in any career.

One of the most important ideas in Educational art is allowing children to

create according to their developmental age level. To that end I would like to give
you a brief summary of what to expect from the different ages and stages.

11
 What to Expect From Different Ages:

The ages and stages discussed here refer mainly to natural art like drawing
and collage. Of course it is self evident that when one is doing projects with kids
one needs to be aware that a 3 yr old and a 5 year old will make very different
things.
They may be given the same project but will have different skills to be able to glue
and cut etc.

The point is just let them be and create at their levels.

If however, you see a 5 yr old consistently creating at a 3 yr old level, it

may be time to check out if there are any underlying problems.

Even during the relatively brief span of the preschool years, there is a wide
range of skills that children are capable of, and so, you need to know what to
expect of a child at each age. What a five-year-old can do is usually not possible
for a three-year-old.

One of the biggest challenges of adults is expecting too

much from our children too soon.

We would already like our 2 and 3 year olds to be creating like a 5 or 6 year
old and it may take a year or two to see any representational work from these
young children.

The challenge of allowing a 2 year old or even 3 year old to keep doing the
same things over and over again before proceeding to the next stage is indeed
quite a challenge for us.

One needs lots of patience until we see any form of actual representation
forming under a child’s hands.

It is not until around 4 or sometimes 5 year of age that children want to

naturally create artwork that actually looks like something representational.
At 2 and 3 and a bit of 4 they are still learning the materials, enjoying
sensory activities and solving problems at their level. (like where should they put this
circle and how much paint should they use)

Drawing and other forms of art are often good indications of a child’s level
of growth. Drawings, or even collages, reflect the level of cognitive development
and often reveal how a child deals with information he absorbs from the world
around him.

Children’s drawing generally follows a certain progression that is a

constant in societies across around the world. Just as almost all children crawl

12
before they walk, so, too, they scribble before they draw. Their drawings will
differ, however, depending on their environment and the instruments of art
available to them.

All children experiencing normal development progress through the same

basic stages; it is only the pace of progression that varies from child to child. Of
course, the boundary between one stage and the next is not sharply defined, and
so, the transitions between stages will usually be fluid rather than abrupt.

Drawing involves much more than a mere attempt at visual representation

of life. Children’s drawings do not copy nature as adults know it and they often
draw simply because the activity itself is pleasurable.

Trying to teach children how to make representational objects at too early

a stage is mostly an exercise in futility and only serves to stifle their natural
creative impulse. It first becomes appropriate to actually try to teach children
skills when they reach 9-10 years of age.

If they have been doing Educational Art the developmentally appropriate

way by that late age their artwork will be so developed already on their own that
they will just fly with it. Until children reach approximately 10 years of age, their
artwork accurately reflects their intellectual growth. From that point on, it
becomes much harder to chart their development based on the art they produce.
With this introduction, we will now outline what you can expect a child to
be capable of at each age of the preschool years.

Two-year-olds:

Children at age two are, developmentally, really still babies and are just
coming in contact for the first time (if you allow them) with many art materials.
They need to learn what markers and crayons and other materials are.

They can mush a little, make some marks with a paintbrush and make random
marks on their papers. Anyone who expects more than this from kids at this age
is fooling himself and not tuning in to the children's real needs. They need a
tremendous amount of sensory play, mushing, with sand, water, glue, etc.

Three-year-olds:

Three years of age is when most children have their first experience with
school. They are still making random marks on their papers and are learning that
they should not write on walls (at least theoretically!).

They are really experiencing paint, markers, clay and other materials for
the first time. They are learning that glue makes things stick to paper, that

13
paintbrushes dipped in paint make color on paper and that scissors are good for
cutting things.

Children at age three usually progress from random scribbling to

controlled scribbling at some point towards the middle of the school year. The
successful teacher understands that children at this age are not ready for
ANYTHING representational.

Four-year-olds:
Children at this age have been doing controlled scribbling for some time
and are beginning to make recognizable objects. You will start seeing some
typical head/feet representation, and they will be controlling their collages a bit
more than they did at age three.

Five-year-olds:

This is probably the most satisfying age group for many preschool or
kindergarten teachers to work with. Almost all children at this age are doing
representational artwork and are adding other recognizable objects to their work.
They are engaged in much more sophisticated thinking and their collages and
clay work can get quite elaborate.

All ages after five are usually elementary level school children who will be
very open and receptive to working this way.

Yet, not even children of this age are capable, on their own, of thinking up
some of the ideas for projects that teachers in the traditional mold create for
them to copy. They can come up with their own ideas and probably won’t match
any adults thinking.

Children whose first experiences with art begin after age five will typically
progress through the stages of years 3-5 much more quickly than other children,
often completing them in a few months time.

Although the need to actually go through all of the stages exists, he will very
quickly catch up with his peers. Thus, he may begin by making random marks,
then move on to covering the whole page with paint and making designs and very
rapidly progress to making real representational pictures.

How sad it would be if these children never got to show

their personalities and capabilities if all they did were
traditional arts and crafts.
To start off those of you who would like a wonderful activity that children absolutely adore below is a short
explanation of one of my favorite art activities…. tray painting.

14
 Tray Painting
Most children’s painting is done at an easel. This type of painting however, can be
done on any flat surface and is called tray painting as it originated with using an
aluminum tray as a palette.

Tray painting is an excellent activity in helping children gain direction-

following skills, color-mixing skills AND is a wonderful enhancement of fine
motor skills.

The actual goal of tray painting is to have the children use the few colors
they are given to mix whatever color they need on their tray or as I started doing,
using pieces of aluminum foil, for their picture.

This activity needs a lot of supervision at first with young children since
the directions can be confusing until children get the hang of it. For younger
children (3-4 year olds), the supervision time will be longer than for older
children (5- and above).

Materials needed:
1. A non teflon cookie sheet tray

(That was how the original name of tray painting came to be. I actually use a piece of aluminum
foil instead of a tray since its hard to find trays that allow for mixing without beading up of the
paint and the aluminum foil can be thrown out after each use)

2. Four basic primary color paints: (Red, blue, yellow, and white)

With younger children, leave out white until their mixing skills get good enough to leave the white
unmixed with other colors).

3. Very small containers to hold paint.

I always use the tops of baby food jars or individual ice cube trays or anything that holds a small
amount. Even if you don’t have any babies it might be worthwhile to buy a few jars and keep the
lids to use over and over again.

4. One paintbrush. (to use at a time unless you have a few in stock of
different sizes for the children to experiment with)

5. A can of water or large cup.

Make sure its sturdy enough that it

won’t tip over with a brush inside, paper cups will not do the trick).

6. A sponge

15
(if no sponges are available, some wadded paper towels will work in an emergency).

7. A piece of paper to paint on. If the kids are just experimenting with mixing you can
use smaller paper, but if they really want to paint a picture you will need larger paper. Usually the
11x17 size it what seems to work best.

Directions:

All of the items for this painting activity go on the tray. If you are using
aluminum foil instead of a tray, the materials go on the side of the foil. Place the
small baby food jar lids with the paint on the tray. (Or on table next to the paper)
Next to the paint you can place the sponge and the cup of water with a brush in it.
Give the children the following directions:

1. Dip the brush in one of lids with paint and paint on the paper.

2. When you are ready for a new color wash the brush in the can of water and
press it on the sponge to dry.

3. Go on to the next color and repeat the process.

4. When your child wants to try to mix two colors, s/he follows the same process.
They just have to remember the correct order.

5. Put the first color on the aluminum foil wash brush, dry, take some of a
different color, put that on top of previous color which is already on the foil. Mix.
Take the mixed color and use on the paper.

The goal is for children to reach a mature enough stage and enough experience to
be able to decide which color they need for their picture and mix it on their tray
for use on their paper. As in‖ I think I need pink…how do I make that‖. The tray
or aluminum foil becomes, in effect, their palette.

Younger children will take longer to get to the mixing for a purpose stage. But
just leave it alone and in the meantime, let the children enjoy the activity, learn to
properly follow directions and learn how different colors combine to make new
colors.

The only thing you need to do is assist them in following the directions for how to
paint. There is no need to get upset if they put their paintbrush in the wrong color
because you use so little that you can just wash the small paint container out and
add new color.

Enjoy
Thanks for Reading
Faige Kobre

16