What to Expect to See in Your Child's Artwork

This is borrowed from Mrs. Weinandy at http://choiceart.wordpress.com/.

Early Explorations

Things To Know About Your Kindergartner’s Artwork:

• At first, “realistic” colors (blue sky, green grass, yellow sun) are not important – children often draw with their favorite color, or whatever color is closest at hand.
• Occasionally, unrelated images may “float” around the page. This will stop as children become more aware of the world around them, and the images in their artwork will become more coherent.
• Children will often focus on one important feature, making this bigger or more detailed than any other part of their art.
• Towards the end of Kindergarten, most children have developed a very specific way of drawing common images (people, trees, houses, cars). For most children, these images will continue to look the same, every time, in any picture, over the next few years.
• The “baselines” (green grass across the bottom, blue sky at the top) generally show up by the end of Kindergarten in a child’s artwork. This also signifies the beginning of “realistic” (and sometimes stereotypical) colors being used more often.

In a Choice-Based Art Room, many students will be in an “Exploratory Stage” this year. Children want to test out materials that may be new to them. This means drawings may sometimes be nothing more than test marks or scribbles. Paintings might only be simple shapes or areas of color. (Mixing and creating new colors is exciting – even if it results in “mud” by the time they are finished!) Collage projects may be flooded with glue – or, students may not want to glue at all – sometimes just cutting the paper into shapes is enough. While it might not seem like much yet, these early explorations are all important first steps on the road to becoming a better Artist!

Energetic Artists

Things To Know About Your First Grader’s Artwork:

• By First Grade, most children have begun to show “baselines” (ground and sky) in their art, and often “realistic” (stereotypical/generic) colors are being used. However, size and proportion are usually not considered yet. Generally, the more important an object is to a child, the larger it is shown in the picture.
• Storytelling through art is often very important at this age. Children may show many things happening at once in a picture. Multiple “mini-drawings” shown in sequence on a page may represent the passage of time. Sometime objects may be drawn “x-ray” style or cut-away, to show what is happening inside.
• At this age, most children can only focus on one area or detail at a time. You may occasionally notice that your child has very carefully filled only one small area of a page, or drawn an object that may seem to be “missing” parts. This is normal, and children will shortly outgrow this stage.

In a Choice-Based Art Room, many students will pass through the “Energetic” or “Active” Stage this year. Because students are familiar and comfortable with the materials and the art room, they may attack their art more energetically then when they were in Kindergarten. Also as more Choices and Centers are introduced this year, students will want to try a little bit of everything, all at once. It is not uncommon for children to want to take home something every art class, finished or not. Drawings may often seem incomplete. Paintings will look muddy from over-mixing colors. Clay projects may often be flattened out, or poked full of holes. Collage shapes may be glued at random, sometimes completely covering up other shapes. While all of this may seem like a regression to the work done in Kindergarten, it really is a step forward, showing the students are comfortable with taking risks and trying new things. Many will progress out of this stage quickly and soon move on to more meaningful art!

Our Art is Shaping Up!

Things To Know About Your Second Grader’s Artwork:

• Children at this age are becoming more social, and their artwork begins to reflect this. There will be a lot less “I/Me/My” in their art, and a lot more “Us/We” – group images of family and friends. Some children also begin working cooperatively on group projects with a friend.
• By the end of second grade, most children are wanting to show a more realistic likeness in their artwork. There is a much bigger concern for getting things just the right color, and more and more details are being noticed and added to images.
• Simple “baselines” (sky and ground) may start to disappear around this age, as children become more aware of background objects (hills or mountains in outdoor scenes; furniture, windows, or doors in indoor scenes).
• An awareness of size and proportion begins to develop often times at this age. However, children may not realize something is “too big” or “too small” until after the picture is complete. While before the most important object was always the biggest, many children now understand that size can have other meanings: something large can appear to be close, while something drawn smaller may appear to be further away.
• Now that children are older, their ideas for their artwork are generally “bigger”. They begin to realize that not every art project can be finished in one class period, so projects will be left to work on for longer and longer periods of time.

In a Choice-Based Art Room, many students are going through the “Shape Stage” this year, as fine motor skills continue to improve. For Drawing, more recognizable shapes and detailed objects will emerge. For painting, “muddiness” will disappear, and large shapes or areas of color (many made by the students) will be placed on the paper. For Clay, coils and balls will be combined in sculptures (and more objects may be glazed before taking them home). For Collage, shapes are more carefully placed, more often next to each other then on top of each other.

Students may move in and out of these stages based on their knowledge or lack of knowledge of a certain media.