A while ago drawing, modeling, and appliqué were considered as activities for kids no less than three years old. Not many mommies would think of giving their tots paints or plasticine оnly 10-15 years ago. Babies were usually offered selfless penciling or marker painting on the paper. Ever since then the attitude to children’s creativity has undergone many changes.
…Two years old Mary uses all her passion to spread her paper flowers with a glue stick and stick them onto a sheet. Look!, there is already green grass growing on the hill, clouds flying in the sky, a bunny running through the lawn, and the sun shining with its painted rays. The tot gives it the last critical view… and tears off the wrong flower, spreads it again, and sticks to the paper once more. From time to time she wipes her little hands dirty with glue on her dress, uses them to readjust her unruly hair and puts out her tongue, which signifies a great degree of concentration … Nowadays, it is difficult to surprise anyone with artists in diapers, and infants can even get plasticine for any desired usage. And it’s great, because creativity is not about the final result but about the process itself. And that is the process, not the result, that is important for 2-3 years old creator.
Peculiarities of babies’ creativity
Drawing with paints or chalk, kneading plasticine or dough in the palm, tearing paper or moving the glue stick over the sheet, your child gets incomparable experience. Creativity helps children to make their first discoveries, learn about color and form, and get acquainted with the properties of many materials. It’s amazing how an ordinary piece of plasticine can be turned into anything you like, and then disappear again, turning into a shapeless lump. Mixing colors – it’s all real magic. Here is yellow paint, and here is blue… Where did the green one come from? For kids, creativity is a tool of learning the world, and a way to acquire self-esteem and feel independent. Every kid of 1.5-3 years has already a unique personality. Do not forget about it when offering any kind of activity. And if a two year old neighbor girl creates colorful masterpieces and easily paints with a brush, it doesn’t mean that your tomboy should use the paints the same way. It is important not to limit your child when they select some material, not to set any goals for them, not to impose them your vision of the world, but give them an opportunity to feel the joy of their own creativity, to express themselves in drawing or appliqué. And there is a great variety of ways for self-expression.
Plop, palm!
The very first tools which can be used even by one-year-old kids to create bright and original masterpieces are their tiny palms, of course. It has to be said that not all mothers can bear such creativity, which most of the kids are fond of. And if you are not afraid of paints splash and your little artist dirty from head to toe, you can give yourself and your child unforgettable moments of joy and new experience. Drawing with palms is best when using special finger paints. But if your baby is not prone to allergies, you can use ordinary gouache paints or make them on your own. For example, use the following recipe. Make thick jelly out of 1.5 spoon of starch and a glass of water, cool it, and split into several parts. Add food dye of different colors to each portion. Now safe and cheap finger paints are ready. Also, as paints for your babies you can use fresh juice of colorful fruits and vegetables: carrots, beets, spinach, tomatoes, and plums.
First of all, take care of the place of work for your artist. The youngest ones would feel more comfortable if they work on the floor. Cover the floor in the room or in the kitchen with oilcloth, lay a large sheet of paper, change your baby’s clothes to the ones you don’t mind to get dirty, or let them wear an oilcloth apron. Take paints of 2-3 colors, pour some in plastic disposable plates, dilute with water to get the consistency of liquid sour cream. Prepare a large bowl with water, so that your small artist can wash their hands. Now dip the palm of your baby into the paint and show how they can slap it on the paper, leaving bright, cheerful tracks. For older kids you’d better put a sheet of paper on an easel, or arrange a desk. If you have the opportunity, fasten a large sheet of paper to the wall. It can in some way save the wallpapers from the encroachments of little painting experimentalists. It is well-known, that it is real fun to paint colorful abracadabra right on the wall of the children’s room.
Palms can be used not only for drawing an abstraction, but also for creating quite recognizable images. For example, use a large sheet of paper to draw a tree trunk and branches, prepare yellow and red paints. Now your baby will be able to dress a tree into autumn outfit, leaving yellow and red prints on the tree branches. A little imagination, a few extra strokes of your brush and color prints turn into funny animals. For example, into a hedgehog: splayed fingers are its needles and a big thumb – its nose. Or into a cockerel: fingerprints turn out to be a great tail and sticking up thumb – its neck, then you can add a head with beak and crest. If you put together your thumbs and make a print of two palms, it will be a real crab. Eight fingers are eight feet. Just paint on pincers and eyes. Palm with fingers upside down will turn into jellyfish and octopus. You just need to add extra tentacles. Firstly you will be the only magic artist, transforming the colored spots into recognizable patterns. But these games will certainly awaken the imagination of your baby. And soon, they will prompt you what is each fingerprint like: a fish, a butterfly or peacock.
The greenery and ultramarine …
Perhaps, nothing can reflect the mood of the young creator more accurately, than drawing with paints. If you have enough endurance and patience, you can give a brush even to a one-year-old baby. But be prepared to see that the greatest pleasure for them will be the opportunity to pour out all the paints on the paper, pour it all with water, get into the slop with their hands and then rub them on the table, walls, clothes. And there is nothing abnormal about it. It is ordinary research activity. And your job is to direct gradually and subtly the energy of your little researcher to a creative direction, teaching the kid the basic techniques of working with brush and paints.
For painting you should prepare few jars of gouache, thick brush, paper (the larger the size, the better), paper towels, non-spill glass, palette for mixing paints. During the first lessons give your kid no more than four cans of paints (starting with just one). Later the color palette can be expanded. Show your baby how to dip a brush into the water, how to get paint on the tip of the brush and make some strokes on the paper. At first, do not leave your baby alone with the paints. After all, you will have to repeat the sequence of actions again and again, to remind them that the extra water should be taken off the brush that the brush should be dipped into the paint with its tip only and should always be washed before getting a new paint. For a start, some teachers recommend to use a separate brush for each color. But it is unlikely to protect the paints from getting dirty. Not ten, and not even twenty times a brush, smeared with blue paint, will dive into the red and black paint mixed with the white. Take it easy. After all, gouache isn’t super-expensive paint. And when your baby learns to use them more carefully, you can buy them a new set.
Meantime, let your baby make experiments, mix paints on a palette or simply on a paper sheet, turning the bright colors into funny, weird ones. Generally, the process of mixing colors is usually very attractive for babies. Show them a trick. Pour a little yellow and blue paint on the album sheet. Tell a story about a yellow-yellow desert which had no water, and no green plants growing. But a mischievous wind brought blue-blue cloud and it poured out blue-blue rain. At the same time mix the two paints together. And the miracle happened: green grass appeared in the desert. Now offer your baby to mix blue and red, red and green colors, to add a little bit of white in the blue and red slops. What did you get? Let your child make experiments with colors on their own.
The first children’s attempts to portray anything should be played up. For example, tell some nursery rhymes: “Big feet were walking down the street: pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat …” while drawing big spots-traces with a brush in tune with the rhyme. And now, “Small feet were walking down the street: pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat …” while slapping with a brush and drawing small traces. What else can be drawn as strokes-spots? Ashberries and strawberries, flowers in the meadow and autumn leaf fall, the snow and the starry sky. Now try to draw strokes-stripes: it can be rain and grass, sun rays, and roads. Offer your child to draw on paper of different sizes, colors, textures. Guess in a blurred spots and strokes familiar images and pay your baby’s attention to it. And praise, certainly praise! And if your baby has painted something crimson and call it a cat, be sure to admire and don’t prove them that there are no crimson cats. The country of the child’s fantasy can have anything! Maybe this cat just ate too many raspberries like Y. Moritz’s poem. That explains everything …
Your kid will certainly love to print on paper and fabric. You can use purchased stamps for that, but it is more interesting to make them yourself. Take a sponge and cut it into pieces of different shapes and sizes. The first stamps are ready. Show your child how to dip them in a diluted gouache and leave prints on the paper. It is clear that the bigger the sheet is the bigger is the work. Try to grease tree leaves, a pine twig, a comb with paint, and print them. You can paint the wheels of a toy car and ride it on the sheet, watching a trace remaining from the wheels. Now children’s supermarkets offer any paint you want, including paints for paintings on fabric. Just imagine how happy will be your baby wearing a T-shirt, painted with their own palms or prints of leaves! If you think this shirt is too extravagant, use it as a uniform for creative activities. New paint stains on it will be almost invisible …
Paper appliqué
If your baby has reached the advanced age of 1.5 years, you can try paper appliqué with them. Of course, all the major steps of this work will have to be taken by their mother. You’ll cut out some figures from paper and then they will stick them onto a sheet. So you can stick paper leaves, apples and pears on a painted tree, flowers, mushrooms, butterflies on a painted meadow, fish on the aquarium, and toys on the Christmas tree. Draw a picture as a background and prepare paper parts. Show your child how to spread the figure with the glue and stick the picture to the paper. At first, you may need to spread the glue yourself as well and your kid will just stick. But very soon they will understand what it is all about.
When making appliqué with your kids, it is easier to use glue stick or a homemade paste. It can be very easily prepared by cooking stiff jelly from half a glass of water and a tablespoon of flour. Cool the mixture – and wonderful, harmless paper glue is ready. It can be spread with a brush or with your finger which is even better.
One of the most suitable techniques for appliqués with the kids is the technique of collage. You can use pictures cut from magazines, catalogs, old books and postcards, all kinds of stickers and colored paper. For smallest ones you can offer just sticking all this beauty on a sheet of white or colored paper. And do not forget that so far it is not the result but the process. Later suggest your child some interesting topic and try to create a joint work. For example, you can draw or cut out background of the color paper: sky, meadow, and railroad. Cutout rectangles are the train carriages, squares – windows, circles – wheels. Now, let’s seat passengers into these carriages (stickers or cutout pictures), complement the work of all kinds of details: the sun, the sky, clouds, flowers, etc. Give your child the opportunity to compose the image the way they want to, do not ask them to use an everyday logic. There is nothing wrong if carriages will rip the wheels off the ground and aim at the sky, the flowers grow upside down or passengers will look into windows somehow crookedly. There is no point in tearing it off and sticking it all over again. There is a lot more charm in such a straightforward child work than in the strictly logical and symmetrical template appliqué. As the son of my friends said once: “Doing everything right is really boring …”
Another opportunity for self-expression for a baby can be a box with all sorts of “rubbish”: pieces of paper, padding polyester, fur, leather, thread, rags, candy wrappers, cutout pictures, macaronis of different forms, buttons. You can also add some cotton balls and pads, which are usually used for cosmetic purposes. Spread a lot of glue on a colorful cardboard sheet (it may be PVA glue) and suggest your child to stick there whatever they want. At first it will be just an off-suit abracadabra. But the experience that your baby will gain while feeling and sticking different materials is invaluable. As a basis for an appliqué you can use not only a standard sheet of paper. For example, it will be interesting to decorate a cutout mitten or a disposable paper plate with patterns. For doing it, cut the colored paper into pieces of irregular shapes, spread the glue on the basis and suggest your kid to create a unique pattern.
If your baby can already tear small pieces of paper on their own, you can make a tear appliqué: stick dots and stripes on painted animals, the stars to the sky, snowflakes, sun rays. Show your baby, how to use fingers to make fringe on a strip of green paper. Here is our great grass! Similarly, you can make the algae, great fish tails and other unique accessories for your baby’s works of art.
Making appliqués with your kid you can easily combine paper and plasticine: babies pinch off small pieces of plasticine and complement appliqués with them. For example, this way you can add spots to the back of a ladybug, a fly agaric dots, berries, and flower piths, toys on the Christmas tree, candies, eyes and noses of all kinds of creatures. And, of course, do not forget about the natural creative material – dried leaves and flowers, chestnuts and acorns, bird feathers and pieces of moss, pine needles and twigs, all kinds of grains and seeds. Then the cold winter evenings you and your baby will have a wonderful opportunity to imagine and create warm and joyful compositions.
Your children’s work can be stored in cardboard folders or folders with clear pockets, but show the most successful and beloved ones to the public from time to time. You can use magnets to attach a couple of clear pockets to the refrigerator and place pictures and applications there, so that their dad, who comes home from work, could see how his baby spent the day. And please, if you need to throw out sheets with children’s creative works, do it when you child does not see. Kids are very sensitive to their work. And such a disrespectful attitude can deeply hurt a little creator.
Modeling together
Plasticine, dough, clay are great materials for children’s creativity. But, as in case with painting, it is not about creating some sort of recognizable images. Kids start independent modeling of dogs, planes and other masterpieces of sculpture kids usually by the age of 3-4. Before that age modeling is more likely to be a game with plasticine, rather than creation of serious handicrafts. But this does not diminish the role of plasticine in any way, quite the contrary. Playing with flexible materials is a process of learning about the world around us and the properties of substances, a way to remove negative energy, useful exercise for little fingers and, finally, the opportunity to spend a lot of funny minutes with relatives and your loved ones. It is better to start modeling when both mother and baby want it. For one lesson 5-10 minutes will be just enough. If you notice that the baby gets distracted, stop the lesson. On the contrary, if you see desire and interest you can tinker a little longer. For the little ones it would be better to use special mass for modeling, homemade pastry or soft clay, which does not need to be preheated and kneaded in hands. When your baby grows and gets stronger, you can use ordinary plasticine.
Do you need to teach the kid to model some concrete objects from plasticine? It is a matter of argument. On the one hand, imposed images destroy the growing creativity in your little one. According to the great writer, teacher and sculptor Elena Makarova, if one day you model a standing dog for your child, they will never model a sitting dog. On the other hand, it is difficult to master a skill without knowledge of the basic techniques. The solution is simple: you should teach your child to use plasticine, but let them decide what and how to model.
For kids, modeling should be played up, as well as any other activities. For example, today, learn you baby to roll balls. Mum models a fox and suggests her child to make a Roly-Poly, so that it can be put on the fox’s nose. Roll the Roly-poly together, then “paint” eyes, nose and mouth with a toothpick. And now you can roll ball-apples, tomatoes or oranges to feed your toy animals. Or make colored balls. At first, balls will be angular and not round, but gradually their shape will improve. And when the skill is mastered, you will be able to model something more specific. For example, a snowman. In winter you can roll balls from snow in the yard, and from plasticine at home. Three balls – and a snowman is ready. You only need to add a nose and put a “bucket” on the head. And what a wonderful caterpillar can be made of colored balls! And a two or three year old kid is quite capable of making it. Modeling “sausages” is also easy. We need to press a little piece of plasticine on the board and roll the palm back and forth. This may be a rope, sausages for a cat, a snake and a worm. If you then flatten this “sausage” with your finger and roll it, you can get a snail, a rosette or a bun for a puppet sweet table. And then try to make plasticine pancakes. Slap a piece of plasticine with a palm, press it a little bit and here is a pancake. What does it look like? Pizza, a plate, a turtle shell, a mushroom cap … These pancakes can be easily piled into a pretty plasticine cake. Just put a few colored pancakes on one another, and then add plasticine candles and “cherries” or decorate using rice grains.
It is really good when mom and baby make it all together. For example, mother models a tiger and her baby paints stripes on his back with a stack or makes them of plasticine sausages. Or Mom models a dog and her child stuck it some plasticine spots, models plates, bone, ball. When your baby is a little older, it’s interesting to make up and implement some big plasticine projects that are created for many days: model furniture and furnish a dollhouse out of the box, create a forest or pond with plants and animals, a zoo, a distant planet and all that you and your child can think of. After all, plasticine is the most wonderful material for creating your own, original and unique fantasy worlds.
Finally, we’d like to wish all parents and kids funny and happy moments of co-creation and protect against the most common parents’ mistake: never criticize children’s work! Even if the painted image does not fit your idea of the image. Even if there are more dirty glue spots on the appliqué, than the appliqué itself. Even if the Roly-Poly is more like a barrel, rather than a fresh-faced ball. Criticism will drown the joy of the creativity process in your child’s soul. A regular “debriefing” will totally kill any desire to create. Be tolerant to your young painters and sculptors, don’t compare them with the children of your friends and acquaintances, love them and admire them, even when there is nothing much to admire. It will certainly bring good results. And even if the works of your baby never becomes masterpieces, they will be bright, original, truly creative.