Archives for May 2012

Anti-Colouring Books

May 8, 2012 · By ·

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I don’t know why children are provided with a plethora of coloring activities in preschool. They do colouring activities in school, colour in Sunday school classes, colour while at a child assigned area in a mall, colour when they are given crayons and coloring pages while waiting for their food to be served in a child-friendly restaurant.

Colouring does aid in fine-motor skills training, help children develop compliant skills by coloring within the lines, improve concentration and attention span, and builds color awareness by learning how to use the right colors for the right items in the picture. But I think, coloring probably benefits adults more than it does benefits the children, as it keeps the children busy and quiet for a while.

In fact, I think the Sunday School that K attends over-does it with coloring every week. All they do, after teaching children about a character development lesson for that Sunday, is to get them to color till the end of the lesson :(  So lately when the teacher feedback that K does not stop talking during class, I am very sure that it is an indication that coloring is boring him tremendously in class! He is showing resistance lately when it comes to completing his homework from school. He finishes the written sections but when it comes to coloring, he tells me that he gets very tired of coloring.

But does coloring have a place in teaching young children art? According to the research of Viktor Lowenfeld, coloring book pages take almost all creative thinking away from 50-60% of children. The other 40% of children may not be effected as they may have been given other creative exposure to open ended art experiences to encourage their creativity. In fact, if a child continually focus on only colouring, he might find it hard to be satisfied with his own drawing. And might get frustrated when his drawings do not look like the adult drawings in coloring books.

I don’t intend to stop K from coloring, however, I will not provide any form of structured pages coloring activities from the art experiences that I will provide for him during our home-learning art sessions. Here’s is an article that I wrote for myplayschool.net about the pros and cons of Structured Art and Open-ended art experiences.

So when I came across Susan Striker’s Anti-colouring book 3 years ago, I knew that I had to get a copy of that book for Kyle when he turned 5. These Anti-Colouring books with their open-ended ideas of presenting ‘canvases’ for children to draw and create on the pages will encourage opportunities for critical thinking, problem solving and thinking “outside the box”. Here are some sample pages to try, best recommended for kids above 5 years old.

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For our recent warmup activity for our open-ended art lesson, I got him to try a page from the book. This was the first time that K encountered an open art activity which involved ‘adding on’ to some ideas on the page, he was a little apprehensive to try it at first, but with some encouragement and modeling, he started adding onto the page.

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K’s drawing strongly reflects that he is in the symbolic stage of his art development, and enjoys incorporating words and numbers into his drawings.

We then went on to an open-ended art activity, and I was quite amazed by the result of it. 

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Categorized: Education · Tagged: ,

Structured Art Lesson – Squares and Circles in Abstract Art

May 6, 2012 · By ·

One of the foundational concepts of teaching a child art is to enhance their observational and interpretation skills of how art consists of shapes, lines and curves.

The art piece that we explored was Squares with Concentric Circles, from the artist Kandinsky. This piece was chosen to teach the illustration of squares and circles in art, as well as, the technique of blending with oil pastels.

Here’s how I incorporated the concept of open-ended process to a structured art experience in my home-learning art lessons:  I introduced to my son K in this lesson of abstract art.

Screen Shot 2014 07 21 at 2 46 39 PMSquares with Concentric Circles by Wassily Kandinsky, 1913

Here are the tips for this lesson plan :

1) Introduce the child to Kandinsky, if the child is below 7 years olds, just share simple facts about when he was born, his country, some of his works and when the artist died.

Here are some useful links : http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/kandinsky/ – Here is a good video with an animation of some of Kandinsky’s works.

2) Gather as many samples of Kandinsky creations, best shown through a computer screen. Ask your child, what he notices from Kandisky creations; shapes, colors, size of visuals, placement or anything else that they see.

3) Show the child a visual of one of Kandinsky’s most famous creation; Squares with Concentric Circles and encourage him/her to try their own creation of the art piece.

4) Divide the drawing paper into 8 equal squares and draw the line in pencil for the child. I do recommend that for kids below 7, the paper can be divided into 4 or 6 equal parts instead, as it can get rather tiring when it comes to having to color all 8 squares at one sitting. CopyrightmpsSA4

5) Encourage the child to draw circles in the squares with a pencil. The child can draw as many circles as he/she likes in the boxes.

6) Then color in with either paint, crayons, color pencil, and highlight that they can use any color that they prefer. I used oil pastels with K, as I took the opportunity to explore blending with oil pastels with this activity.

As a further extension of this activity for kids above 6 years old; search for a variety of classical music with different moods. Tell the child to pick the colors that suit the different moods and that they can translate the different moods through the colors or the brush strokes that they use on each of the circles in specific squares.

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Here is a video on blending with oil pastels, if you plan to also teach your child the techniques of simple blending.

7. Math integration – I went with a total of 8 separate squares of circles for K, but as I expected, it got rather tiring for him to complete the full artwork.

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Some Insights  :

I was careful to take note that this was not a situation where he lacked motivation and hurriedly put something on paper and then saying, “Done.” He took extra care and effort in drawing, blending the oil pastels and completed the 5 squares with circles in 45 minutes without stopping to take a break, then finally exclaiming that he was tired and wanted to stop.

Being an advocate of child-led methods through how children can learn art, I did not push him to finish it. I did not see that it was necessary for him to re-visit this art piece being an abstract work to start with, and asked if he planned to continue this.

He asked if the artwork could still be unfinished, as he wanted it to look different from the Kandinsky piece. I told him that there is no right or wrong way when it comes to presenting art especially when it comes to abstract pieces. I explained to him that sometimes art can be presented in an unfinished format, and it could be very well be his interpretation of this project.

Nevertheless, it was an excellent opportunity to seamlessly integrate math concepts into his unfinished art piece.

We counted the squares, number of circles in each square, the number of colors he used in each square and I further added on by using math cubes and demonstrated equations of 5 + 3 = 8 and 8 – 5 = 3, using his incomplete art work. CopyrightmpsSA1

The child will learn about how shapes are used in abstract art, interesting information about a Russian abstract artist, explored the techniques of the artist in his own open-ended way, blended colors by using oil pastels and explored concepts in Math with his artwork.

A structured art activity (explored with an open-ended outcome) can be beneficial for a home-learning art lesson, to help drive specific learning objectives during the process and give the child room to develop his creativity.

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Categorized: Learn · Tagged: ,

Lessons on Assertiveness

May 1, 2012 · By ·

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I used to have a problem with being assertive when I was a young adult. Always struggled with saying ‘No’ when someone tried push their opinions on me or tried to get me to do things their way. Then I end up feeling fed up and resentful that I have to see things through, just because I did not have the guts at that moment to stand up for myself.

I became a lot more assertive after becoming a mom. In fact, it all started with an episode at work, when I was being unfairly evaluated at a year-end appraisal due to being pregnant. I presented my case to regional HR for the unfair treatment, but was prepared to move on to a new job after that episode. I was severely ‘marked’ by my boss who hated my guts, but thankfully, I found a new job after 2 months.

I encountered two episodes this week on how assertiveness might / might not work to a person’s advantage.

The first episode happened when I had to make a trip down to ACRA to get some paperwork completed. While at ACRA, at the customer service counter, I was brushed off by this lady who obviously had little idea what a customer service job entails. I tried to bring up my issue three times and all she did before listening what I had to say, brushed me off and told me that I had to make my payment at the internet kiosks on site.

After struggling for like 15 minutes, I realized that the issue could not be resolved with a simple click of the button. I went back to the customer service counter, tried to tell this lady at the counter that I was experiencing a problem, but got brushed off 2 more times, as she continued to insist that all I could do was to make payment at the kiosk.

At that moment, I lost patience, and raised my voice, “Now you listen! I am having problems with my payment, as your system put my application on hold since yesterday. You have to stop telling me to go to the internet kiosk and make the payment, as the method does not work anymore for me. I do not want to make my way all the way here, and be told to use the internet to the make the payment, when I could have easily done it at home, if I did not have this problem. So are you able to help or not!”

She started fumbling with her response when she realized that she had to manage a not so happy customer in front of her. She answered weakly, “You never tell me.” I raised my voice at her again, and said, “Did you bother to listen in the first place? You didn’t! All you did was to brush me off many times when I tried to bring up this issue to you!”

Within the next 5 minutes of this exchange, my problem was solved.

Could I have done it differently? Probably not. Giving her that nice, gentle, and understanding response will not have solve my problem so quickly. Sometimes, one have have got to be assertive, especially when it comes to dealing with lousy service.

The second episode happened in an underground carpark, as I was in a car with K, waiting for hb. A lady came along with her supermarket trolley, knocked on the window when she saw K seated at the driver’s seat, who was pretending to drive. She opened the car door and said to K, “Young man, you cannot be in the front seat, turn off the engine now, as you are destroying the environment!” As I was seated behind the driver’s seat, I opened the door and asked the woman if I could help her. She immediately blasted at me with these words, “You are very irresponsible, to leave the engine running, you will destroy the environment! How can you do that, turn off the engine now!” I looked at her, with a deadpan expression said, “Sure…” and then closed the car door.

By now, I was actually quite taken back by how someone could infringe into my personal space, be so aggressive towards me and to tell me what to do with my car. Even though I was fully aware that I was not environmentally responsible, by leaving a stationery car engine running, and have the air conditioned in the car turned on for the sake of our comfort. But to hear it in such a rude, aggressive and self-righteous tone, just prompted me to ignore the point that she was trying to make with her speech.

About 5 minutes later, she came around to my car again, open my door one more time, and starting blasting at me, “I told you to turn off the engine, how can you leave the engine running like that, and you have been doing it for the last 5 minutes!” By this time, I was getting quite irritated by this intrusion of my privacy. But I just looked at her in a deadpan voice and answered, “Why don’t you stop driving altogether then?” With my rebuttal, she got even more indignant and started, “This is a shared environment, by doing this, you are destroying our shared environment. How can you do this, you better turn off the engine now, it is a shared environment…” She continued repeating the same words about how this was a shared environment to people who walked pass her, and was ignored.

All I did after her speech, was to reach out for my car door, closed it and I continue talking with K. While from the corner of my eye, I saw her stand outside my door for another 10 seconds before walking back to her BMW car and driving off in a huff.

This lady chose to be assertive at the wrong place, wrong time and at the wrong person. All she did with her assertiveness was to pushed my wrong ‘buttons’. I was in my ‘rebellious teenager’ mood where the rebel in me just said, “Just make me.” For that moment, I just refused to be coerced into doing anything.

For the record, this lady did not look crazy. She was dressed neatly, spoke proper english, carried herself like a normal person and looked like she had a supermarket trolley filled with organic goods. But she sure has got lousy EQ. If she had approached me differently, or told this to me in a different tone or manner, I would have willingly or even felt embarrassed enough to turn off the engine immediately. In fact, I can’t really tell if she was being assertive, or just plain aggressive.

How would you have responded if you are being confronted with such assertiveness or aggressiveness, like in this instance?

 

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