Let’s consider what children’s art looks like. Those who work with children will soon notice that children’s artistic talents progress through specific stages. The stages of development are as natural as progressing from a crawl to a walk, and when they are older, on to a 100-yard dash. We can think about the three, four, and five-year-old as being in the crawl to walk stage of artistic skills. In art, these skills first involve using the large muscle groups (arms). The child will then gain skill using small muscle groups (fingers). The paintings below show the two stages of development that a preschool child will work within: manipulation and symbolic. On the left is an example of manipulation of materials. The paint is put onto the paper just to see what it will do, with no concern for showing an object. Next to it is a representation of a snake. The child works at creating her own symbols that stand for the objects she wishes to put on paper. Preschoolers will bounce back and forth between these two modes of making art as they learn about new materials and develop a symbolic language.
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