I will ask up front in case the post is too boring; Can anyone recommend a picture book (or two) that encourages children to want to make art. Something for a younger crowd. The only thing that comes to mind is The Dot which is fantastic but for an older child. It is a difficult topic to search because the result are more art appreciation. I want something that says "yea I like making art". I'm having a hard time finding anything that will entice Citcat to color or paint. I know a book will encourage her.
Crafts and artwork make up a big part of early childhood education and many home school families seem to thrive on art making projects. Not this family. Citcat all but refuses to color or participate in any craft making activity. She will agree to painting but mostly she wants to paint her hand and she loves the glue stick. The glue stick being the next best thing to a lip balm. She will happily spend minutes playing with a glue stick. She doesn't like to really glue anything she just wants to glide the stick over every surface in the house. So to channel some of her painting and glue stick interest I helped her make this collage.
For a child that is not fond of crafting, I think this project turned out pretty well. First, over the course of several weeks she finger painted on regular paper. She knows all her colors (believe it or not since she was 18 months old) so we worked on the idea of primary colors and mixing colors. Of course, her favorite color combination is brown because she wanted to mix all the colors together. I hung the paintings all over the kitchen to display and dry. We made a big deal over her art work. Next we practiced ripping paper and using scissors. She ripped most of the pieces for the collage. And finally, she glue sticked the pieces and placed them on a big piece of paper. She seemed to understand the point of covering each space of white. The result is very pleasant.
The collage is now hanging in her room. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated. Here are some in process photos. She stopped painting one day to spread dried lentils all over the kitchen.
