Children never draw the picture, they simply express their thoughts and feelings with the help of materials and tools made them available, provided or found them. Children actively, spontaneously represent their thoughts and feelings, imitate and copy the events, acts they observed around them.
Whatever they represents in the form of pictures is merely and application of material and behaviour of tools as per their wish and will. It is neither an art nor a drawing; it is simply a pictorial representation of their thoughts and feelings and a display of their imagination. They love to art, it's fun for self expression for them. Children used to express themselves in a surrounding of their own.
Pictorial expression of a child through tools and materials cannot be considered as a form of ART, as verbal expression of child through various voice modulations cannot be considered as a form of SPEECH, as the body language expression of a child through various physical activities and gesture cannot be considered as a form of DANCE or PERFORMANCE.
It may be considered as an ART unless you nourish their behaviour because ART is a form of creative expression and DRAWING is a process of rendering with certain aims for subjectivity and objectivity. It is possible only after proper guidance and teaching. Art of children is a unskilled visual expression of their own.
Emotions, thoughts, feelings are of protective values of children should be nourished by their respective concerning schools, teachers and parents. Parents and teachers should come together to nurture their creativity. It helps to build a mental status, ability for self-expression and develop a tendency of spontaneity to paint freely with pleasure. Proper execution and implementation of art programmes leads to self-actualization.
It is also very important to search the meaning of art in education, programme of art education in class rooms, its objective approach towards seeing, learning, observing and expressing for expectable results also. Existing approaches and programmes are not up to satisfaction in view to develop its effective implementation among the children. Teachers don't know what to teach, how to teach. They themselves are not fully aware of art education, meaning of art education. They should search and study the global pattern, its meaning, and ways of execution and implementation in the interest of children. I feel there is no need to frame a definite pattern for art education for the children. Explore all the possibilities as per the interest of the children and availability of material. It is the responsibility of the school to encourage teachers and facilitators to provide drawing materials from the outset, and also take a leading step to provide them specialists teacher, facilitators, parents and caretakers with lots of inspiration ideas and concepts.
While implementing the art education projects and their related assignments teacher should frame an art assignments or lessons by age and by mediums.
Preschool (age 2-5) : Early childhood, Toddler and Perk,
Primary (age 5-8) : Kindergarten
Junior (age 8-11) :
Middle (age 11-14) :
High School (age 14 and up)
Creative performance of a teacher implementing, the art curriculum and education programme to put in the mind of children gradually drop by drop; it's depends upon teacher to teacher and students to students. Teachers INTEREST are the key of children welfare and future of their career. Teachers instils the confidence to develop the visual arts and enhance mental acuity, visual thinking, self –expression, self-realization, tools and technology, joy of creativity and its celebrations, observations, skills for visual literacy.
Teacher should have the tendency to go deep into the rabbit hole and create a spitting image of their intended vision, and also eliminate all the traces of disappointment, non-cooperation, discourage if they face while implementing the art curriculum. They should enlighten their own path for self achievement.
In my view children art is a language of freedom of choice, feeling and emotion of their own.
If you take a look into the history of art to main art streams evolved out of the impact of children art. One is NAÏVE ART and the second is OUTSIDER ART.
Nave Art is a classification art that is often characterized by a child like simplicity in its subject and technique and in outsider art (often called as raw art or rough art) a label created by French Artist Jean Dubuffet. These two streams of art explained as a self- taught or Naïve art which were never institutionalized.
Prof. Hemant Nagdive