Artwork: What to Look for
Got kids? Got crayons? If so, odds are your refrigerator is covered in artwork. Maybe you've used drawings as wrapping paper for family gifts or framed a couple of pictures for that special spot above your desk.
- At age two most children first put crayon to paper. After about six months of seemingly random scratchings, children often begin to name their scribbles.
- Three- and four-year-olds start drawing people—a round head with two straight lines coming out the bottom for legs. To the child, these drawings represent real people in their life: One such “tadpole” person is clearly his mother while another—identical to the first—is his father.
- The five- and six-year-old artist draws people who have well-defined heads, bodies, arms, and legs. She might also work carefully on teeth, hair, accessories, and other details. When she has determined a pattern for drawing a person or object, she then repeats it with little variation. At this stage children also begin to use a baseline in their drawings. Pictures no longer float around the page, but are lined up near the bottom.
- Between ages seven and twelve children learn to refine their drawings and paintings. Their creations show people in action, for example, as well as three- dimensional images.
At any of these stages, children may copy their own work repeatedly. This doesn't indicate a lack of creativity, just the simple reinforcement of new skills. Enjoy the artistic overflow while it lasts. After age twelve, children tend to grow more critical of their own work, and only the most artistically inclined keep at it. Your refrigerator face may seem crowded now, but it may return to featuring nothing more than generic magnets sooner than you think.
So save those precious art projects as they're created—don’t wait until they're yellowed with age. Ask your child to describe each scene so you can label and date it, but don't let them pile up in a box—use them! Transform a painting or drawing into a plate or coffee mug. Turn another into a magnet. Then give it a place of honor on the fridge for life! Too awkward to paste into a book? Take photos of three-dimensional art and save them in a portfolio or photo album.
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Comments from readers
1. I'm so happy to see this issue addressed. Rushing children into reading because a parent feels pressure from a competitive world may end up producing the opposite effect from what is desired. By allowing children to enter into the shape and feel of letters at their own speed, they are able to establish themselves comfortably in the "landscape" of letters. In my experience, this is a much more fruitful approach to reading than, for instance, repetition or flash cards. But the most important contribution a parent can make is to read to a child on a regular basis. A routine that includes story time creates a lifelong bond of moments shared between parent and child. At the same time, it reveals to the child the wonders to be found between the covers of a book, so out of themselves they might say, "I want to be able to do that myself." Then the gained ability to read is rich in texture and depth, referencing always the warmth and love of early childhood story time.
Posted by Michael Garrett on Jul 3, 2007 5:22 pm
2. Hi ! This program is very good to show all the Parent how to teach the children how to read,i'm very enjoy, and love it.Thank you so much.
Nina Tran
Posted by Nina Tran on Oct 10, 2007 8:43 pm
3. This article ignores the fact that the brain has an ideal "window of opportunity" when it come to reading. Waiting TOO long to learn means the skill will be more difficult to aquire.
Posted by Jennifer Okada on Dec 1, 2007 7:19 pm
4. Thank you for this article. Our 27-mo old boy has an inmense love for letters, numbers, shapes and colors. I've read a lot about fast learners and gifted children, we are even debating on transitioning him to a bigger school etc. After reading your article, my take home message is to just enjoy being parents of a fascinating child, he keeps us challenged all the time, and reading the Cat in the Hat over and over again!
Posted by Esmeralda on Jan 24, 2008 4:09 pm