“ Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once you grow up” Pablo Picasso
Drawing is a natural process for all children. From infancy, children begin by experimenting with drawing tools and making marks on paper, and as they grow, these marks start taking on meaning. For most children, Art, particular drawing and painting, allow children to use their senses, to explore and process their world and surroundings. Drawing allows children to express their feelings and emotions.
As parents, the best way to teach children to draw is to give them exposure to materials and drawing tools and let them scribbles and express themselves freely. When children become older, their drawings will become more detailed and reflect the world around them.
Drawing can offer opportunities
- Emotional growth: drawing gives the children the opportunity to express their feelings, they can express their fears on paper and also drawing allows them to show their love and happiness, feelings that might be difficult for some children to express in other ways.
- Intellectual growth: drawing allows children to become more aware of the environment around them. It will help children to develop problem-solving skills and think about what they choose to draw, the manner they use to portray relationships between things. drawing helps children to learn and acquire knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and sense.
- Physical growth: drawing helps children to develop their fine motor and coordination skills, children will get to practice how to properly hold a pencil and/or crayons, and how to colour in small closed areas. progress from random scribbles to basic forms and beyond.
- Perceptual growth: drawing helps children to absorb, organize and interpret sensory information and the new experiences and knowledge in their work. It can be seen in children’s growing perceptual awareness and use of variations in colour and form in their drawing.
- Social growth: drawing allows children to reflect on what they socially experience with others. The human person is the first thing that a child recognizes and draws. Further children drawing will start to emerge that reflects the child’s appreciation of people and relationships with others.
- Creative growth: children will embrace creativity and confidence. Giving your child the freedom to draw means that they can create anything they want. Drawing allows children to create visual symbols to reflect ideas from their imagination into paper.
Drawing presents a language for expressing thoughts and ideas that improve as the child grows to be able to express reactions, opinions and needs. On the other hand, drawing offers, the caregiver a vision of how the child recognize such thoughts.
Reference
Marilyin JS Goodman, Children Draw A guide to why, when and how children make art. 2018
