If you put a bunch of paper and jumbo crayolas on a table, and let a bunch of v small children loose on it, what do they do? They grab the crayons and just start colouring, with gusto, without forethought, without a plan, just for the joy of mark-making and no other reason.
Fast forward ten years in those same kids' lives, give them drawing materials, and they may shyly refuse, saying, "well, I'm not v good at drawing"
When a adults see a little kid colouring, they often ask: "what are you drawing?" I think it's a terrible question, bc it is nudging the kid toward goal-oriented product-focused work.
I absolutely do blame our deeply misguided education system for making play and learning into a goal-driven chore, where someone else judges the value of the effort and assigns a grade to it.
The "free play" portion of this adventure isn't to get something at the end. It's just for the simple pleasure of mark making, of making friends with the implement and the paper, of having fun, of a goal-less activity. The product is irrelevant. There's no grade. There's no test. There's no judge, external OR internalized.
If you take a toddler for a walk in a park or on a forest trail, it's a v slow process, bc they will stop over and over to pick up a beautiful pine cone or an appealing pebble. In that moment, those things are priceless treasures to them. That mindset is what's most helpful here.
Confident_Fortune_32 in the post "Internal crisis over the 50% rule"
2023-01-29 17:14
If you put a bunch of paper and jumbo crayolas on a table, and let a bunch of v small children loose on it, what do they do? They grab the crayons and just start colouring, with gusto, without forethought, without a plan, just for the joy of mark-making and no other reason.
Fast forward ten years in those same kids' lives, give them drawing materials, and they may shyly refuse, saying, "well, I'm not v good at drawing"
When a adults see a little kid colouring, they often ask: "what are you drawing?" I think it's a terrible question, bc it is nudging the kid toward goal-oriented product-focused work.
I absolutely do blame our deeply misguided education system for making play and learning into a goal-driven chore, where someone else judges the value of the effort and assigns a grade to it.
The "free play" portion of this adventure isn't to get something at the end. It's just for the simple pleasure of mark making, of making friends with the implement and the paper, of having fun, of a goal-less activity. The product is irrelevant. There's no grade. There's no test. There's no judge, external OR internalized.
If you take a toddler for a walk in a park or on a forest trail, it's a v slow process, bc they will stop over and over to pick up a beautiful pine cone or an appealing pebble. In that moment, those things are priceless treasures to them. That mindset is what's most helpful here.