Drawing Mama

This is Kuba's drawing of Anna.
Clearly he has moved up the scale of drawing development - which begins with scribling...and then more precise scribbling, and then drawings involving circles and lines that depict a form.
He told me he was drawing mama.

I am so impressed that he drew a body! And that the arms are not sticking out of the head.
When I was student teaching in a progressive elementary school in Bristol, England, I worked with a teacher who was so angry with one of her kindergarten students because they were drawing figures with arms and legs coming out of the head...it struck me even then how silly it was to be mad about something like that. I wasn't an art teacher at that time, but I was aware enough to explain that drawing had a sequence of developmental stages and he was just in an early stage.

I love watching my kids drawing development.

Unfortunatley, Kuba doesn't just stick to drawing on paper and sidewalks...nope, he has marked the steps, the house, furniture, tables, the bathroom door, his legs etc. It's real fun for him, but not so fun for me! We are working on this one!

I once read how parents get so excited about their child's first step, or first word, but don't even notice or get excited about their first marks. In fact the child's first mark is an equal milestone b/c it signifies his attempt to communicate his understanding of the world in visual form, visual literacy. I'm all about marking visual moments.

Here are a couple of links about drawing development in children.
www.learningdesign.com/Portfolio/DrawDev/kiddrawing.html

www.users.totalise.co.uk/~kbroom/Lectures/children.htm

and a fun blog with lots of art ideas for kids

www.artprojectsforkids.org/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=50