News Letter articles - issue 6

Creative Art

 

A creative spirit is present in everyone. Most children experience great personal satisfaction from using their imaginations to create works of art, but the most important function of creativity is the freedom to express ideas and feelings about themselves and the world around them. Children may not know how to say they are feeling but their brush strokes and use of colours will often reflect their feelings. Even very young children should be given opportunities to do artistic activities.

Encouraging creative expression is more essential today than ever before. Traditional schooling places limits on children’s creativity, encouraging conformity and a quest for “right” answers rather than spontaneity and imagination.

So, it is very important that this creative process is encouraged in the home. Ideally, you could create an art space – a small table covered with an old shower curtain, a few shelves or boxes dedicated to supplies, old shirts for smocks, old towels on hand for spills. There should be an area where your artists can display their artwork. Keep it set up and it will serve as a constant invitation to your children to sit down and dream up creations.

Stock up with interesting materials; scraps of material, nylon stockings, wood, sawdust, pasta, clay. Encourage a range of projects. Drawing and painting are great but how about;

• Chalks on black card
• Play dough (see recipe below), Play dough can be left white and painted when dry. It can be pounded, kneaded, poked, rolled, shaped, and squeezed. You can expand its use by giving the child rolling pins, biscuit cutters or perhaps a garlic press
• Finger painting (see recipe below)
• Adding sawdust to paint for added texture
• Shaving cream can be used white or coloured with dry tempera and can be used as face paint.
• Corn flour and water is another interesting sensory experience. It should be mixed with an equal amount of water until liquid but not runny. Then just play!
• Collages. A collage is a picture made by gluing things on a background. Try beans, glitter, rice, magazine pictures, straws, fabric, paper pieces.
• PAPIER-MÂCHÉ . Use newspaper strips dipped in paste (recipe below) to cover objects, such as balloons to make masks.
• Crayons. Try taping a piece of paper over a coin and rubbing the paper with the flat side of a crayon until you can see the texture underneath coming through. Or cover a sheet of paper heavily with a light coloured crayon. Cover the first layer with a darker colour, which also is applied heavily. With a toothpick, scratch a design through the top layer of crayon so the lighter crayon underneath can be seen.

 

It may be necessary to provide your child with starting points – challenge them, for instance, to create an alien who might live on Jupiter or to design this year’s Christmas cards. But we should never limit them with too many instructions or guidelines. We should always value the creative process involved in producing art, more than the end result. In any creative field, thank goodness, there are many ways of tackling creative projects and there is no one “right” answer.

 

RECIPES

Play Dough

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 tablespoon oil

Mix all ingredients together in a sauce pan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until a firm ball is formed. Remove from heat and knead. Food colourings can be added to water before cooking or dry tempera kneaded in afterward.

Finger Paint

1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups cold water
1 cup hot water

Add salt to flour, then pour in cold water gradually, and beat mixture until smooth. Add hot water, and boil until mixture becomes glossy. Beat until smooth, then mix in food colorings or dry tempera for colour.

 

PAPIER-MÂCHÉ paste

Mix 1/4 cup sugar with 1/3 cup flour. Add 2 cups water, and stir out lumps. Stir and cook until mixture is a smooth pudding-like consistency (about 3 to 5 minutes). Cool. Refrigerate unused portion in a covered jar for future use.

Sharri