Blog
Creative Castle LEAVES KidsU Norwalk
We are sad to report that Creative Castle art classes for kids has left KidsU Norwalk as of July 2009 due to Kids U Norwalk breaching our contract.
We may reopen in Westport CT and offer after school art classes.
How Creativity & Intelligence Differ
Understand how creativity and intelligence differ and how to measure your child’s creativity.
Creativity and Intelligence are not the same thing.
Creativity is a special type of problem solving ability that is employed when conventional solutions won’t work. Creativity calls for flexibility and adaptability in the way someone thinks.
With young children creativity should focus in developing and generating new ideas. It is a brain storming process.
Encourage creativity by providing children with the opportunity and confidence to explore, take risks, challenge assumptions and see things in a new way.
More details are in the video.
Scribbling How Reading and Writing Begin
Tips to help your child develop writing skills.
1st Stage of Art Development - SCRIBBLING
SCRIBBLING
All young children take great pleasure in moving a crayon or pencil across a surface and leaving a mark. This form of mark-making or “scribbling” represents children’s first self-initiated encounters with art.
Children typically begin scribbling around one-and-a-half years of age. Most observers of child drawing believe that children engage in scribbling not to draw a picture of something; rather they do so for the pure enjoyment of moving their arms and making marks on a surface. Recently, however, a few researchers have challenged this traditional view by showing that young children do occasionally experiment with representation even though their scribbles may not contain any recognizable forms. This new perspective suggests that children’s earliest mark-making activities may be more complex than previously thought.
2nd Stage of Art Development - PRE-SYMBOLISM
PRE-SYMBOLISM
Around three to four years of age, children begin to combine the circle with one or more lines in order to represent a human figure. These figures typically start out looking like “tadpoles” and then gradually become “head-feet” symbols. It is not uncommon for children’s first representations of the figure to be highly unrealistic or to be missing a neck, body, arms, fingers, feet, or toes. Children may, in fact, draw two tadpoles to show their mother and father without making visible distinctions between the two figures.
By Craig Roland
Associate Professor of art education at the University of Florida
