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If you’ve been around Do.Play.Learn. a few times, you know that my motto is to think outside the box. As in, find ways to explore, learn, and have fun with children that are beyond the normal scope. I’m going to take a different view of that today. We hear all the time how children should be able to express themselves freely with art and how worksheets are bad for young kids. Though I agree for the most part, I also think that these things are imperative to do at home for children headed to public schools.
But why?
Why should my child learn to color inside the lines?
Why should they be made to do worksheets and structured art projects?
The answer.
Because that’s what public schools do. I’m not bashing public schools. But worksheets are used. “Follow these steps” art is done. So, if we spend our whole time home-educating our kiddos on outside-the-box learning activities and free creative expression, we’re doing them a bit of a disservice. I think entering public school will be harder on them as they are made to work on photocopied papers and within creative parameters.
How to teach coloring in the lines, product art and worksheets.
This is a tough one. Ultimately, we have to assess our child’s learning style and structure our teaching surrounding it.
“You’re scribbling,” the 4 year old girl said to Bear at vacation Bible school. “Why are you doing that?” I saw my sweet boy’s face crumble with embarrassment at the situation and newfound disappointment in his picture. Thus began my internal struggle over encouraging him to try to color inside the lines. I don’t like telling him that he should try to do it. so I had to create a game out of it. I got a brand new box of crayons and let him pick out a new coloring book. (His options were ones created by the do-a-dot company as they have bold, solid lines and fairly large spaces.) Coloring book pages laid out in front of us, I playfully challenged him to “paint” the vehicles without getting the “paint” (crayon) on the “room” (white space) around it.
Product versus Process
Product art is a tricky one for me, as I hate it. With a passion. The best technique I’ve found for this is to surf Pinterest with Bear at my side. He usually finds something that he likes and wants to recreate.
Bear {5} loves our learning activities. But he rejoices in doing worksheets because it makes him feel more like Pip, his 17 yr old sister. So when he wants to do workbooks, I get them out and we find a few pages that appeal to him or that can help him further work on his skills. He gets to focus independently on his “work” and I get a few minutes to work beside him on my own projects.
