Remarks about scribbles

Sheila has just posted links to two very interesting guides to children's art development. While I see my own role exclusively as a Godly Play storyteller and facilitator (NOT as an art teacher), I nonetheless found several points of interest there.

Here's great advice along the lines of the kind of feedback we try to give in Godly Play anyway:

As the [under-3-year-old] child starts naming his or her scribbles, listen to the child’s comments and use the meanings offered by the child as a source for dialogue. ...If the child says, “I’m running,” ask questions like “Do you like to run on the playground?” or “Where are you running?” Encouraging the child to verbalize his or her thoughts, feelings and experiences independently shows the child that you value what he or she has done. This sort of thoughtful praise will help children to be enthusiastic and imaginative in their future art encounters. (Craig Roland)

And this is a reassurance for those who might be disappointed not to be giving pre-set crafts to our preschoolers:

At four or five, the child begins to tell stories or work out problems with her drawings, changing basic forms as needed to express meaning. Often once the problem is expressed, the child feels better able to cope with it. (Susan K. Donley, citing Betty Edwards)

For these quotes in context, and much more, click through to Explore and Express: Art & Child Development: Two Great Resources.

topical response work

The children in my Godly Play classroom are aged 2-6. They almost always choose to work with the art materials during Response Time, rather than story materials, and it's extremely rare that the artwork they do is [or rather, seems to me to be] related to the day's lesson, any lesson we've done, or anything to do with their spiritual lives at all!

In fact, it was striking when two new children joined us in the autumn, children who had been to Sunday School elsewhere. For the first several weeks, the older one drew pictures of Jesus on the cross, and the younger one often copied this. It seemed likely to me that the elder child was trying to do what s/he assumed would be expected. Otherwise, though, apart from rainbows when we do Noah's ark, I don't think any of the artwork has had anything to do with our lessons.

Most of the time I manage not to be bothered by this. I know that every week these children pay attention to a lesson, break bread together, and receive personal blessings from our pastor. They are given the opportunity to thank God corporately in song and individually in naming something that they're particularly thankful for that week. And so it's enough that in the Response Time they know that they'll be trusted enough to be left alone for a while if they want to be, while knowing that we will be happy to look at their work with them if they ask us to. It's enough that they are in a worshipful environment with adults who care about them.

That's enough.

But I was thrilled today when a four-year-old showed me this winding trail of glitter glue and explained, It's the road to Bethlehem.

EDIT: Just minutes after posting this, I was led to this Washington Post article about play, which reminded me that the more we limit the children's choice about what they do, the less it's play. And after all, the name of this curriculum is Godly Play.
h/t UMC Ministry with Children

Godly Play morning for (almost) all ages

Thank you, Leslie, for writing words of encouragement after my last post (about plans for today's Godly Play event), and also to my mother, who sent an email saying she was praying for us. My prayer had been that everyone would get something they needed from it.

There were thirteen of us in the circle. We had children aged 3-5, a young teen, a grad student, parents, adults without children, married couples, and at least one pensioner. We were people born in North America, the Middle East, Eastern Asia, Africa, and Europe (including Finland!). 

I told the story of "the Great Family" (of Abraham and Sarah), using a desert bag for the first time in our classroom. This prompted at least two people to make plasticine deserts in the Response Time. 

Some people responded to the literal distances in the story and the idea of emigration, while others responded more metaphorically, for example to the idea of travelling through the desert without the refreshment and guidance of a river. One person even connected ideas from this story with insights from a recent television documentary about the Second Law of Thermodynamics! 

In the picture below, you can see that Abraham's body has been buried under the "sand". 

Afterwards, I asked the children what their favorite part of the day had been. One said working with glue. Another said helping with the feast. However, the feast was something of a disappointment to at least one child, because there was no food, only drink (a decision I'd made because lunch was to follow almost immediately). Also, the children found some of the grown-up talk difficult to sit through: notice the two children amusing themselves below by wearing their napkins on their heads:

We ended our session with a very different kind of prayer time than we've had before. I put the desert out again, and handed around a basket of stones and blocks. Everyone took a turn and put one into the sand. If they wanted to, they said a prayer after doing so, either in their heart silently or out loud. 

I think this was the most successful prayer time we've ever had in Junior Church / Godly Play: we have one child who is often very awkward about prayer, but who seemed to handle this activity just fine. 

When we got home, Vandriver asked me what my favorite part had been. I said, "Entering the room after preparing the drinks for our feast [during the Response Time] and seeing everyone doing their work - whether chatting together over plasticine, making a glitter glue painting, taking a nap, or reading about prayer."

art responses this week

This week I had hoped to snap some photographs of hands in action during the Response Time, but there was just too much going on and I never had a moment to even remember that I'd brought a camera with me. So I didn't get any photographs of our new rolling pin (for the clay/plasticine) or of the child who was the first (ever) to start working on a cut-and-paste collage. But I did snap a few pictures of the glitter glue paintings as they were drying after class. 


So far I have permission to display two of the three photographs I took. The mother of the artist who said no thinks that the child might reconsider after seeing the blog. But I told the child that sometimes church stuff feels kind of personal and private and that's okay. So possibly a third photo will appear here in a day or two. But if not, then be happy that the child has felt comfortable saying no. 

Notice the purple carefully placed in the corners

If you know this lesson you'll understand the inclusion of the gold cord