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Sunday, May 30, 2010

Toddler art is great to display

This isn't a new idea or even my idea but I wanted to document this idea in my blog because I think it is fabulous.

I am often asked for activities that toddlers can do that will also be great to display. Sometimes this is referred to as "refrigerator art." I hesitate to focus too much on refrigerator art because first and foremost I want to express  how important it is to make sure theprocess of creating is emphasized more than the outcome.





Process over product is a term used over and over again by early childhood educators in hopes to help parents and others realize that young children learn through the doing. In my last post I shared the experience of Wy discovering the tools to create and exploring the process. In this post, Wy explored the process of painting with Q-tips which resulted in a colorful non-distinctive painting (shown above).


This painting (shown above) was another simple painting Wy created using sponge brushes. This painting may not look like a masterpiece but it can be displayed to look like a masterpiece and yet still preserve the process that Wy explored.


I took an old picture frame I had around the house.


Chose the part of the painting I wished to display and then trimmed around the edges to fit the back of the frame.


I then inserted the painting into the frame which resulted in a terrific piece of art to display and yet the learning process was preserved!


After trimming away the edges of the painting, I had one of Wy's little hand prints left over.

I cut out the hand print, dated it, and gave the handprint to Wy's daddy which he gently folded up and tucked into his wallet.

2 comments:

Teacher Tom said...

My wife hates stuff on the fridge, so we went out and purchased some nice frames at Ikea, then just kept rotating our daughter's art through them.

As a teacher, I'm worried I might have wound up taking the "process over product" idea a little too far this year. School is over and I still have huge stacks of kids art -- I mean stacks several feet high -- that I never even got around to sending home. Some of it goes back to the fall! In my defense, no one every complained either.

All the families are supposed to come in to help clean up the school next weekend. I've decided I'm going to hold their children's art "hostage" to make sure they show up! =)

Deborah Stewart said...

LOL! You are so funny Tom! Good luck with sorting all that out.

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