Process and Product

"My child used to do this coolest projects at her old school," said a parent during my first year teaching preschool.

"Like what?" I asked.

"At Halloween she made a bat hat that was so cute! I should show you the picture of her class with their bat hats. Oh, and they made this pillow for Mother's Day and she painted I Love My Mom on it. I still have it on my couch."

 At the time, all I could do was smile and nod (and try to hide some hurt feelings because of her implication that our projects were not "cool.").

It's actually taken me a while to fully grasp the reasons and importance behind our school's philosophy about art. And that is...

preschool art is not about the end result, or the product.  It is about the journey, or the process.

When a child is given materials and encouragement (rather than explanations and directions), they are free to create and explore using their own background knowledge and interests. Somewhere along the way they learn to make their own choices. They learn autonomy. They learn persistence and determination and resilience. They learn self-reflection. They learn to be risk takers. They learn that what they create may be different from others and that's okay.

By limiting the amount of adult micromanagement, children learn the value in the process of creating for creation sake. They begin to make their own judgments and require less adult feedback to feel validated and empowered. As our children continue throughout life, this intrinsic motivation and positive self talk is what is going to help them thrive.

Just to be clear, just because we focus on process art at preschool does not mean that I don't have several objectives for each activity in the back of my head. Rather than making sure that children put the appropriate number of legs on their spiders, I focus my attention on individual goals for individual children: For some children, I take note that they came on their own to even try the activity (unfamiliar can be intimidating!). For others, it's a success if they worked longer than one minute. For others, it's can they try it again but using a different technique? This list goes on and on.

As you can see, process art is not lazy or thoughtless. It's actually just the opposite.

Sometime art is messy and all over the place! It's multiple colors - all over each other - until they fill the entire paper and even the clips have to be moved because it just would not be done until every square inch of paper is covered!

Sometimes art is reflective and works to make sense of concepts being learned in the classroom and in life. It requires sitting down. Sometimes we can even see something that we recognize.

Sometimes art shows clear developmental stages, follows patterns, and is "neat." The take away here is this: no matter what art looks like, for preschoolers, it is always purposeful.

Check out this site for helpful ways to talk with your children about their art: http://creativityintherapy.com/2016/07/how-to-talk-to-kids-about-their-art/