Not sure whose work this is, but whomever: I hope you never stop loving glue sticks.
Scroll Instagram or Pinterest or search “toddler art projects” on google, and you’ll find a lot of traced hands, painty footprints, and googly eyes.
Please know: I have nothing against any of these individually or even, occasionally, together, but: everything in moderation.
Mother’s Day prep in our classroom is a little bit of a head turner because I spend 50 weeks a year telling parents that the artwork is optional and then for this one occasion, I will go to pretty great lengths to make sure each mom has a card.
Here’s the important part, though–I’m still not getting involved in the how.
There’s a concept of shared responsibility in art that actually extends to a lot of elements of parenting & teaching. I’m responsible for providing the supplies and, maybe, demonstrating how they work, and the child is responsible for actually making the art.
When we leave kids to their own artistic process–maybe offering a quick and gentle demonstration of how a material works, asking questions here and there, but mostly just staying out of it–all kinds of windows into the child’s development unfold. We notice how she holds a pencil, that he’s fascinated with the way the glue stick works, that she’s still learning how the parts of a face fit together.
All day long, give me a child’s art that is sparse, monochromatic, messy, so thick with paint that it takes a full 24 hours to dry. When we let kids’ art emerge from them instead of taking over, we respect their individuality and also create for ourselves a full catalog of moments in time, which are, to me, an even better memory than any cat face I held a child’s hand to draw.
Here, the window into this child is that (s)he really loves gluing right now! Upside down, overlapped, unbalanced–it’s charming today and we get to see kids’ skills and creativity grow over time.
By all means–here and there, make a footprint keepsake. But once you dive into the world of kid-led art, you’ll never go back.
(PS: I love taking process art and turning the pieces into collages and object renderings…squeegee-painting butterfly, anyone? We can also model all kinds of art processes right alongside our kids: You make yours, I’ll make mine; each different, each lovely.)
I’m Jessica Brown, an AMS certified Montessori teacher, and at Clementine, we offer parent-child classes for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers…like mommy-and-me, but more. We learn and chat about topics like this one both in and out of the classroom. If you’re local to Libertyville/northern Lake County, IL and are interested in finding more about our community, I’d love to hear from you!