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Artsy Kids
The Art of Teaching Art to Children
By Nancy Beal and Gloria Bley Miller
You can easily make copies of some drawings or paintings and send them on to grandparents, other relatives, and close friends. When my daughter was 6, she drew an angel with a long dress and funny little feet. I had it Xeroxed on the upper right-hand corner of some copy paper and it became my stationery for a year.
You can put the work up for display on the refrigerator, held in place with magnets. Or you might even frame a piece or two. Such endorsements should not be overdone, however. Displaying too much work indiscriminately can make it seem as if nothing has been singled out for importance, that one piece of work is much the same as another.
For saving some of the drawings, paintings, collages, etc., a special drawer may be set aside in a chest or a cupboard. I also recommend that you date the work on the back so that you can observe the child's imagery as it moves from a frontal view to a profile, then on to a more advanced rendering of the figure. Of course we cannot save everything, but a child is 5 years old only once. These drawings will never happen in the same way again. The work you save is a unique record of a human life.
I have sometimes been asked whether the parent should work alongside the child. I don't usually recommend this, although it depends on the spirit in which it is done. Many adults are afraid of art materials, so if they say, "I wish I knew wha to do with these," sometimes the child can take the lead. I would hope that if you do participate, this would be in the same spirit of playfulness that most children express, which is to investigate and explore the materials at hand. Direct adult participation can also lead the child to realize that art is an interesting, serious, and engaging activity, no matter how old the participant is.
