Kids' Art Lessons In School

Learning Art in School
Both my Snow White and Cinderella attends a childcare centre since I am a working mum. I do not wish to overburden my domestic helper too as she needs to take care of my baby. So with the 2 older kids in school, my domestic helper is really relieved that her job is not so demanding. Back to my kid's school, as part of the curriculum, my kids would have Art lessons, though not necessarily drawing and colouring/painting all the time. Sometimes, I heard my child telling me that she and her classmates are playing with play dough. Another form of Art! In the beginning, when she was 3 years old, Snow White would bring home lots of Art pieces done using fingers--I mean -Finger Painting .


Neat Pieces of Art Drawings
I was really impressed to see nice and neat pieces of work from Snow White's childcare centre.  I have also learned a trick or two when comes to painting. Just let our kids draw and colour, never mind that it is messy because we can always cut out the figure or object and paste it onto a nice background. Then we can frame it up if we want to. Here it is :

                           What a nice flower! Sponge Printing

National Day flag whereby the kids would paint  the background using their palms and the teachers helped to paste the symbols and then cut out a triangular shape for the flag. The kids would use this flag on National Day Celebrations and then bring it home for keeping after that.

A tie for Daddy. As you can see, the orange background was done with pupils using using their hands or rather palms to paint, the teacher would cut out the shape. This time, Snow White had to paint the decorative items on the tie. Still the teacher cut out the orange background into a shape of a tie to be given on Father's Day to Daddy.  Indeed, the teacher asked Snow White some questions, made the kids create a card by painting dots and recorded the reponses on the card. All these--a card and a tie --make the greatest present for my husband. Take a look at the card and the responses by Snow White :

                                          The Father's Day Card. (Finger Printing using paints)

                                          The responses made by Snow White.


In the next 2 pictures, you will see a few pages of a story book created for the kids based on the story   'Rainbow Fish'.  (It is actually 6 pages of sketch book size papers stapled together to form a book.
Behind each page, the teacher would write a paragraph related to it .

In the first picture below, you can see progression in her colouring. Later, the teacher made the kids paint a blue background for the ocean and then cut out  shapes of fishes and let the kids decorate the bodies. What a clever idea, it really gives the kids a sense of ownership. My child came home very excited and proudly declared that she had made all these herself.

Colouring of 'The Rainbow Fish'. (I can see that Snow White was trying to make the fish colourful as the story is about a Rainbow fish and rainbows are colourful.)

Snow White painted the background , the sea creatures were cut and pasted . She had  included some decorations on the bodies of the sea animals.

This was the last page of the story book. This time, the background seemed to be done by an adult as the painting was smooth. The kids must have done the fishes by painting on another paper (you can see colours on the fishes looked uneven) and the teacher cut out the shapes of the fishes. I remembered Snow White telling me taht she even pasted a shiny 'scale' on each fish. the scale is actually a sequin.

Art Lessons For Kids

First Art Lesson
Since Snow White shows more and more interest in painting, I become abit more kiasu too.(The word kiasu is used locally in my country -refering to being scared of losing out to others). I came across an Art School that offers us 3 trial lessons at a discounted rate. I enrolled Snow White of course. I could not stay to watch her in lesson, but I gathered from her that the pictures were drawn by the teacher and she simply filled in the colours under guidance. Here is one of the pieces that she took home :

                                          Can you see the butterfly?

 I do not like the idea of the picture being drawn and kids just filled the colours. Don't find that she learnt much. Anyway, Snow White completed the 3 lessons and she expressed that she did not like it so much. I was glad to pull her out too. So we are back to our home based drawing. More pictures :

                                          Splashing around.

                                          Painting of a house, done solely by Snow White.

Personal Thoughts
There are alot more pictures done by her. Did not keep them and have thrown them away until I thought it is a waste, why not take pictures and document her growing up years and capture her talents ? That is why I started this blog for my 3 daughters.

Some of the things Snow White always love to draw and can draw well are people, houses and perhaps fruits like apples and oranges. One thing that I noticed is that she can apply any colours to anything that fancies her. Once, she painted a face blue. I was about to correct her but was stopped by my husband. He would tell me to let her be, and let her explore! Let her develop her creativity! From then on, I let her have a free reign. Sometimes, I wonder if this is right. My husband does have a point about creativity, at the same time, I cannot help but feel that there should be some very basic things that a child should know like warm and cool colours, composition.....