But what is it? Understanding and responding to children's art

Do you have one of those kids who come home with a huge pile of artwork everyday?  Paintings, drawings, teeny-tiny scraps of purple, red and yellow?  Or maybe your child brings home just one "jewel-encrusted" piece of construction paper, sopping with glue still, that they insisted you bring home instead of allowing to dry in the classroom? 

For older children, sometimes this art work is easily recognizable, but for many children in the early childhood years, the paintings are gray or brown blobs, or simply scribbles all across the paper.  As adults, we're using to considering art as a representation of something, so we're tempted to ask our children, "What is it?"  Here's the surprising news:  sometimes it (really) isn't anything at all, and more importantly, it's just fine if it isn't anything at all! If that's the case, though, how do we respond when our children enthusiastically show us their painting or drawing?

Very often, art work is an exercise of process for children; they are not always working towards a product.  Art materials like paint, clay, glue, markers and other drawing materials are fun just to explore and "see what happens" on the paper.  That's why you'll so often see big blobs of gray or brown.  What you don't see is the twenty minutes the child spent adding blue to yellow to make green, and then adding red, just to see what happened.  (Brown happens when you add all three primary colors.) From this experimentation process, children learn a LOT.  They learn about the qualities and properties of the medium they are working with. They learn how oil pastels feel slippery compared to crayons. They learn that the viscosity of finger paint is different than tempera.  They learn what happens when you add blue to yellow (and if you were in the classroom, you'd hear their exciting discoveries as they cry out, "Green! I made green! Look, it's green!" They figure out (eventually!) how much glue you really need to hold that feather onto the construction paper. They learn about straight lines and circles and they gain lots of fine motor control as they learn to manipulate their paintbrush, marker or pencil (yes, this will help them with writing later, but this isn't even the most important part of the experience of art!)  More importantly though, they learn that art can be a way to express feelings and beauty and eventually, that it can be used to represent ideas.

"This is the ice cream monster. This is the syrup monster.
This is a cake monster.  More syrup monsters.

So how do we talk to children about their art?  One of the easiest ways to go is to simply tell your child what you notice about his or her art.  "Oh, I see you used a lot of BLUE on this painting," or "I notice that you used a lot of CIRCLE shapes here."  Noticing what a child does in this simple manner supports the process of what they've done because in doing so you have demonstrated a non-judgmental appreciation of what they've done.  It can also expand their vocabulary. Instead of "blue," say "slate-blue," instead of noticing a green-yellow color, say "I see you've made chartreuse!"

But what is it? As long as you keep noticing things about their work, children will tell you "what is it," when and if it is something!  If you ask, "what is it?" children who aren't yet creating representations with their art are likely to just make up something they think you'd like to hear.  And unfortunately, if they weren't representing, but just experimenting, it also sends the message that their art should "be something," and that they did it incorrectly.  So just enjoy noticing. And when you're done, they'll very likely want to tell you more things about their art work.  And they'll keep on creating!