Art and Music

Art and music were two of the subjects that seriously made me think about sending Morganne to Waldorf school instead of homeschooling her. Waldorf-schooled children develop impressive artistic and musical skills at very young ages.

For young children, I recommend Susan Striker's book Please Touch for open-ended art ideas.

Our art education consists of a well-stocked art supply cabinet and an easel that's also stuffed with art supplies. I've put bugs in the ears of many of our friends that art supplies are much-welcomed gifts. We have normal kid art supplies like scissors, glue, finger-paints, tempera, crayons, felt pens, glitter and cake watercolors. We also have real artist's supplies such as oil pastels, drawing pencils, tube watercolors, watercolor paper and so forth.

Morganne has free access to the art supplies so long as she cleans up after herself and cares properly for the materials. She has shown that she's not ready to care for certain materials (such as the tube watercolors and their brushes), so those materials are limited to times when there is adult supervision.

I think that free access to art materials is a lot better art education than what typically passes as "arts and crafts" in schools, church programs and scouts. A lot of "arts and crafts" projects are adult-directed modeling art projects. The adult presents the child with pre-cut shapes (say a pumpkin, three triangles and a mouth) and the child then assembles them according to adult instructions. Such projects are not art. A two-year-old's crayon scribbles on paper (or the wall) have more real value to the child than a thousand modeling art projects.

I do sit down with Morganne sometimes and show her a technique, such as using a dry brush to lift color in a watercolor painting or folding paper to make paper-doll chains or snowflakes. Usually, this in response to a question. Sometimes it's because I'm in the mood to paint or make snowflakes and Morganne will ask me about what I'm doing.

The summer I was pregnant with Matisse, I started learning watercolor painting. I would set up two painting boards, complete with palate, brushes and other materials. Then I would work on shading a cube or a sphere and Morganne would mix colors with abandon and paint whatever her 3.5 year old heart desired. We had fun, working at our different projects together.

At the age of 3 or so, Morganne liked to take her clothes off and paint her belly with tempera paints. Our young friend Melanie used to begin all felt pen drawings with her two hands -- she'd completely cover both hands before tackling the paper. Our friend John, at two, liked to put his play dough on the floor (vinyl, thank goodness) and squish it with his toes.

I wanted to mention one other type of art material that gets a lot of use around our house - clay. Sculpy comes in many colors and bakes dry in the oven. It's not too expensive and easy for 6 year old Morganne to work with solo. Our favorite modeling material, though is Das Pronto. Das Pronto comes in white and clay colors, air dries and can be painted with tempera paints. Sculpy's good for artistic projects (witches, animals and so forth) while Das Pronto is good for more clay-like projects.

Oh, and don't forget good old-fashioned mud. A few weeks ago, we had four homeschooling children from this list over here and they began some impromptu mud play in the yard.

And one more thing: coloring books are Evil Incarnate and do nothing positive for a child's art education. It takes no creativity for a child to fill in adult-drawn shapes and gives a child a poor concept of the value of natural children's art.

We are fortunate to live near Santa Cruz, which is the home of the Children's Art Foundation. In addition to a wonderful (and expensive) series of art classes, the Children's Art Foundation promotes children's art from around the world. So there are often free local art shows with beautiful children's art on display.

The local library also runs children's art shows from time to time. They even ran a homeschoolers art show for the month of February. Morganne had a couple of pastel drawings displayed in the show.

I was going to expound on music, too, but I'm called to change a diaper.