Painting!

Hello Families,
Today we painted with all of our friends. Painting with young children can provide many benefits and as you can see from the pictures is a lot of fun too! We decided to share with you some info about painting from Bing Nursery, a well known nursery school that, like us, is inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach to education. These painting experiences will evolve over time and will continue to have a positive impact on your child's development as they grow. We hope you enjoy the following from Bing!

Paint and Physical Development

• Painting provides numerous opportunities for advancing physical abilities including fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and visual perception (Danko-Mckee & Slutsky 2003). In addition, teachers regularly observe children developing gross motor skills, sensory integration, grip strength and balance when working at the easels.
• Research has documented that the act of painting promotes lateralization of the left and right brain hemispheres (Feldman 2003), improving the brain’s ability to integrate functions such as creative thinking with planning and execution.

Paint and Emotional Development

• The process of painting can be a soothing sensory experience for young children. At Bing, it often aids in separation from caregivers and can be used as a tool to process emotional experiences.
• The medium of paint has the ability to transform feelings and ideas into visual form, offering children a means of communication other than verbalization.
• Engaging with and conversing about paintings (both those created by children and professional artists) promotes an awareness of and an appreciation for the aesthetic qualities in art and in life.
• The act of painting supports the development of self-efficacy, self-restraint and self-correction (Feldman 2003).

Paint and Social Development

• Painting supports the development of a self-concept (Feldman 2003).
• It provides an opportunity to observe peers in their process and connect through a shared interest.
• Group painting invites planning, turn taking and collaboration.
• Painting also supports group project work as a method of documentation and sharing children’s ideas.

Paint and Cognitive Development

• Painting involves a number of cognitive tasks for children, such as “experimentation, exploration of cause-and-effect relationships, critical thinking skills, and visual discrimination” (Danko-McGee & Slutsky 2003).
• While painting, children encounter opportunities to learn about colors, shapes, sizes, textures, categorization and numeracy.
• Painting inspires planning, problem solving and symbolic thinking, as well as discussions involving a child’s own observations and evaluations.

Paint and Language Development

• Painting can encourage children’s discussion of art terminology, qualities of the paint, order, direction, location and spatial relationships.
• Children often incorporate story elements into their work or provide a narrative of their thoughts and theories while they work.
• Research with young children suggests that children who are encouraged to draw and paint at an early age will later learn to compose stories more easily, more effectively and with greater confidence than children who do not receive this encouragement (Applebee 1988; Clay 1995).
• Finally, painting also provides the opportunity to explore visual patterns, imagery and literacy concepts that precede formal writing (Olshansky 1995).

The Stages of Children’s Art
According to Rhoda Kellogg, author of The Psychology of Children’s Art (1967), children place paint on the paper in very specific ways and in very specific stages. From her study and analysis of over 1 million pieces of children’s art from around the globe, Kellogg concluded:

1) There is a universal creative impulse among children.
2) Children make first scribbles by 2 years of age.
3) All children progress through the same stages of art.
4) Children’s art develops from experimentation to representation.

Kellogg observed that children’s first stage of art is marked by dots, lines and multiple lines. Children then explore movement of paint on the page, creating zigzags, roaming lines, loops and whirls. Next children begin to use lines to make shapes and designs, creating circles, then crosses, mandalas and stars. Children then paint closed shapes, suns, faces and human figures. Kellogg comments that “the favorite subject of  people is people”(p. 65) and as a result, she notes that children’s work will focus on human figures for a long period of time, first with heads, then heads with limbs, later followed by figures with full torsos and more detailed features such as ears, eyebrows or belly buttons. Kellogg observes that children move from human figures to other topics and representational figures. Children then place these figures in context, often adding ground and sky to their pictures—creating a horizon. Finally, Kellogg identifies her last stage of children’s art as the point in which they use pictures to “tell a story,” using art as a tool to create visual imagery to accompany their narratives.
While Kellogg provides only one of many theories on the artwork of young children, O’Hanlon and Berquist highlight that it is her thoughtfulness, close observations and value of children’s work that serve as a model for all.

Extending Children’s Work with Paint
When supporting painting activities, O’Hanlon and Berquist advocate that teachers and parents:

• Observe and listen.
• Give children time to explore their ideas and complete their process.
• Model respect for children’s work with their time, attention and language.
• Follow children’s leads and interests.
• Encourage social referencing and relationship building around art activities when feasible.
• Attend thoughtfully to each child’s skill level (also known as the Zone of Proximal Development), allowing the child to explore independently, and offering help, information and new skills during moments of frustration or challenges exceeding current developmental abilities.
• Serve as a scribe for children’s stories, ideas and theories.
• Focus on children’s process and experience rather than their product.

O’Hanlon and Berquist provide the following guidelines when engaging in conversations with children about their paintings:

• Demonstrate an authentic interest in a child’s work.
• Affirm and value their efforts.
• Try to avoid judgments, labeling or asking “What is it?” and instead encourage language and expression with open-ended questions and comments like “Tell me about your painting.”
• Use art vocabulary and terminology when appropriate. (Example: Talk about color hues, intensity or tones.)
• Discuss the use and properties of painting materials and tools.
• Offer comments on process, techniques or elements to sustain interest.  (Example: I see you made five vertical lines from the top to the bottom of the paper.”)
• Use open-ended questions to help children reflect on their experience. (Example: “What happened when you mixed the blue and the yellow?”)