Development of Drawing

Recently during group meeting Hannah made her way over to the art area where the easels were set up with pens and other drawing utensils. She began drawing with great purpose. It was apparent almost immediately that Hannah was attempting to represent an idea on the paper. She very carefully drew a round shape put two eyes, a mouth, and ears. After she finished she exclaimed "mira" (Hannah's primary language is Spanish) and was delighted in her creation. She then proceeded to duplicate her "face" and make more. The round shape proved to be a little tricky but she was persistent, trying again and again to get the shape she desired. Hannah spent a long time working. This was the first time any of the children have purposefully drew and labeled a drawing. I inquired if Hannah had been practicing drawing faces at home and her father indicated that this was the first time he had ever seen her draw in such a manner.

Hannah's interest and growth in drawing did not go unnoticed by the other children. The following week Hannah was back at the easels practicing her faces. Sebastien and Bryce came over and joined in. If you listen, you can hear Sebastien saying "over, under, over, under" as he moves the pen on the paper. This is the time it is important for adults to choose carefully what they say while children begin representing ideas through art mediums. Here's a link to a previous article: Supporting Children's Art Explorations.

One of the best ways to get children to talk about their drawing is to ask very open ended questions like, "tell me about your drawing" instead of "what is it" or "is it a _____ (fill in the blank with what you think it is)". Sometimes children draw just to draw and don't have a goal in mind of what it is or what it is going to be and when we label their drawing for them it takes away the opportunity for the child to express what it is they were actually working on. Children want to please adults so when a parent says "oh, it looks like you drew a tree", the child will most likely respond "yes", even if that is not their intention. Even a simple "wow" or "look at what you did" is enough to get children talking about their drawing. Theo is working on the shapes of letters, I only caught the tail end of his drawing but he is beginning to make the connection that certain shapes represent letters.

Most of the time I say nothing at all and just listen to the children as they draw. As Max draws I am intrigued by his train of thought. First he sings a little bit of twinkle, twinkle, little star but then is distracted by something he finds on the easel. He returns to his drawing and says something I don't quite catch but then he labels his drawing "a balloon". Did the round shape with the long tail remind him of a balloon and thus he labeled it a ballon? Was he thinking of things in the sky as he sang twinkle, twinkle and then remembered balloons are also in the sky? Simply fascinating.

Friday Group - Coming Together

One of the most challenging aspects of playgroup is understanding that each group has different strengths and work together in different ways. Introducing group meeting to both the Wednesday and Friday group allowed me to see more clearly how these two different groups of children work as a whole group. The Wednesday group very easily fell into the routine of group meeting (three or the four children also attend school settings outside of playgroup) whereas the Friday group seemed uninterested in gathering in the manner I presented (one of the four children attends school outside of playgroup). Instead of continuing to proceed with group meeting I decided to take the time to examine more closely how the Friday group relates to one another and how they naturally come together without my influence. By understanding what naturally draws them together and see the ebb and flow of their interactions I can better present and engage the children in a more formal meeting time.

The following video highlights the children spontaneously coming together at the swing and working together toward a common goal; successfully pushing a friend on the swing. Even though Bryce and Kaia are a bit on the perimeter of the interaction they are still watching and engaging with the interaction. Bryce's enthusiasm spills over to Hannah and Kaia tries to coach Hannah on Sebastien's technique of hold on to one's foot to get a bigger swing when it is her turn inside the swing.

There is a lot of trust and negotiation that children use to work through pushing each other and my role becomes guiding the children to ask questions and speak to one another. Kaia is trying to communicate her needs to Hannah and Sebastien is trying to find a way to be able to push Kaia. Although the interaction seems so simple in it's execution, the children have a lot to contend with; how to push the friend, how high to push, how to make sure the swing doesn't hit one's body, all the while maintaining the fun and cooperative atmosphere.

Reflecting

One of my goals in the new space was to make visible the children's work. Part of making the children's work visible is reflecting back to the children the work they have done during previous sessions. Since I only see the children once a week this becomes an important part of recalling the children's memory of an experience. Through seeing images of themselves around the room and presenting the images to them I can bring the children back to a prior experience and then build further. The Wednesday group really enjoys group meeting and I presented them with photos of themselves weaving. The children grappled with how to explain what they saw (they are still gaining the vocabulary that encompasses weaving) and finally Caleb decided just to show me what he knew. The revisiting also brought Max to the weaving which he had not been interested in before.

Once I presented the photos during group meeting I then placed them next to the loom for children to look at and explore. The Friday group engaged more with the photos when they could come to them on their own terms.

"Weaving is too hard"

One of my goals of Materials Playgroup is to introduce materials to children and watch them create. I had grand plans for weaving and built a loom just for the children. I quickly realized that although the children had used ribbon in the past, weaving was a little too high above their zone of proximal development. What is the zone of proximal development? It is a concept developed by the social constructivist Lev Vygotsky and relates to the difference between what a child can accomplish without any help and what he or she can do with assistance. The children are still gaining the small motor development to be able to complete the task so even with a little guidance they struggled with using different kinds of ribbon to weave on the loom. I view the children as so capable and competent that I sometimes forget that certain experiences need more than just competence and interest but also the physical development to complement the other skills children already have. It became very clear (I already had the notion during their first experience) to me during Friday's playgroup that it might be better to wait on weaving for a bit when Sebastien gathered all the ribbon from the weaving area, put it in a bucket, placed it on the table and said, "weaving is too hard".

The loom will not disappear in the play space but will be placed on the wall at the children's level and I will continue to leave items next to the loom for exploration. I do want to reflect the experience back to the children by viewing photos of themselves and placing the photos near the loom to see if they are inspired to continue trying to weave.