SPARKING AN INTEREST IN ART IN YOUR CHILDREN
ByYou may be scratching your head wondering why your kids aren’t more interested in art. While not everyone is predisposed to be a creative soul, there are some things that you can do to help your kids get into coloring, painting and drawing.
Instead of focusing on technique, composition or other such oh-so-serious topics, make sure that your children are first and foremost having fun with any artwork they are making.
This is especially important when kids are just beginning to learn to color and draw. They are much more interested in their movies and television programs than they are in learning about art, so use that to your advantage and find interesting themes on television. So for instance, what kind of cartoons or programs do your children regularly watch and how can you incorporate those characters, environments, colors and ideas into a fun art activity?
Remember that for whatever theme you choose the art ‘lesson’ must be easy to complete in order to let the students build self-confidence in their abilities. Building self-confidence is very important because it will help carry your little ones past the initial learning curve required when learning the fine motor skills that coloring in and painting require. When you begin the goal should not be to produce proficient little Picassos, but rather to build enough confidence in your child that they are interested in having an art ‘lesson’ again.
If you don’t ‘grab’ their attention and get them interested when they are just starting out, your children risk developing the ‘I can’t draw,’ and the ‘I can’t paint/color’ syndrome and then you have surely ‘lost’ them – well, at least in the short term.
So, think about which television, movie or cartoon characters your children enjoy and search for a few online art resources that would grab their attention. For instance, at sites like Disney Coloring Pages you’ll find the best Disney colouring pages that would appeal to both boys and girls.
Coloring in an existing drawing isn’t as daunting to a young child as a blank sheet of white paper is. Younger children may even be lost for ideas on what to draw when faced with a blank sheet of paper.
Coloring sheets may not encourage creativity and immagination as much as a blank canvas does – however they do provide a great springboard for younger children to practice their fine motor skills and an opportunity to slowly build up the confidence in their dexterity and artistic abilities to progress onto the big wide world of art!