Why Give Young Children Paint 6 videos
One aspect of reflective practice asks that you question your certainties and routines. Preschools almost universally give young children pigments and small brushes to paint on a variety of surfaces: vertical easels, table flat paper, hardened clay, and even their own faces. We know that children enjoy adding color and streaks to an otherwise blank surface, but why? What are they thinking that makes this activity interesting? And how can teachers justify this time as educational, a question that defines reflective, intentional practice?
At a minimum, children become interested in the changes created by painting. They think, can I repeat this change? Can I vary it? Do I understand what I did that creates the variation? But this general form of interest holds for such a large set of activities that we would not feel satisfied with “cause and effect†as the answer to what children learn from painting. For example, tissue paper can be crushed and holds a new shape, sand can be pushed to the side opening a hole, soapy water can be splashed to create a mound of bubbles. Yes, the general interest in the causes of a state transformation are a part of painting a surface, but can we discuss processes that are more specific to painting? And can we identify episodes where children’s painting seems rather banal and needs to be bumped to something more valuable? We have found a few video clips in the Videatives archive to encourage and support this discussion. Look at each of these in turn.
Using the Mirror to Paint Faces
The Accidental Mark
Decorating a Clay Butterfly
Transforming Colors in Water
Transforming Colors on Paper
From Smearing to Exploring
We have many more painting episodes in our video archives, but let’s stop now and think about what children learn when they play with paint. We need to rethink the value of totally free play with paints. In co-constructive learning environments, such as those found in the preprimary schools in Reggio Emilia, painting activities begin with questions and instructions from the teacher. The teacher asks the children to slow down and think about what has just happened and to predict what is about to happen. In preschools in the U.S. it is often considered disrespectful to interfere with a young child’s smearing and smudging of paint. But are we are doing the child a disservice by assuming that he/she will learn exclusively by doing rather than also by thinking about what he/she is doing? By thinking we mean some type of verbal encoding of the experience that helps the child revisit the pattern of his/her actions. The source of the encoding could be a declarative comment the teacher makes as the child works or a prediction or summary comment the child makes during his/her work. School, after all, is a place for doing and thinking, not simply for doing.
