To be just a tiny bit bothered by what I saw at my son's nursery this morning?

[KingofnightvisionKingofinsight]

My 3-year-old DS just started at a new nursery. The teachers are lovely and kind and DS seems happy, and obviously that's most important. But anyway...

This morning at dropoff DS wanted me to stay for a few minutes so I did. I watched him sit down at a craft table set with lovely materials including glue, glitter, scraps of fabric and cotton wool, and small yellow paper circles. My DS spent several minutes carefully applying dumping half a bottle of glue to a good portion of his paper, and then he asked the teacher to pass him some glitter. She very sweetly encouraged him to put more glue on other parts of the paper first, which he did, and then she gave him the glitter. A minute later she gave him a yellow circle. He started to glue it at the bottom of the paper, but she gently corrected him, saying that the sun belongs at the top. She then pointed to a sample project that had been made. It was a picture of the beach, with an ocean of blue fabric scraps and glitter, cotton clouds, and in the top right corner a yellow paper sun. My DS dutifully copied the sample picture and proudly showed me his beach.

AIBU to be a little sad that the nursery is giving the kids the idea of what to make and even showing them something to copy? Why can't they just put out the materials and let them create? I'm wondering if this is always the nursery's approach to art or if it's just this particular teacher. She is otherwise lovely so it's not like I would dislike her for this, but if this always how art and creativity are managed at the school it does give me a bit of pause. If it is I would still be happy with the school but I think I would like to engage them a bit (in a friendly, non-demanding way) about their reasons and figure out how it impacts other areas of the curriculum.

AIBU?

Surely the point would be to talk about beaches and what you see there, then show some pictures, give the children materials and let them create their own beach picture. Most children will ask for help if they don't know how to show a fish for example, that's when you can demonstrate. Afterwards they can tell you why they put the yellow circle at the bottom and what it is. Then it's not a copying exercise but you get something that the child has decided looks like the beach. OP you are not BU if this is how it's always done there. If you usually end up with a bag full of free formed "art" from your LO like I do and this was a once in a while thing then you are BU.

I thought you were worried that your child had delayed learning development as he didn't know where the sun should be. Nursery nurse has probably had to put that on his development sheet. That will stay on his record. Shucks thats Oxbridge out the window then eh!

Oh yeah no wait... the child is young and lives in Northern Europe... probably didn't recognize yellow circle to be anything one might see in the sky!

it means she has dismissed you MrsDeVere. Its a bit like the HTH

Do you feel dismissed?

nightmonkey, a quick AS shows you as only having been posting under this NN for a couple of days.

Either you're new or you're hiding and being goady. Whichever it is, i suggest you back off and stop being so goady and rude to other posters.

I see your point op. I'm not going to read the thread. It makes me sad to see 3 year olds instructed in this way.

DD's nursery was wonderful. They did copying like that, but they also did freely imagined things too, more of the latter tbh. They taught arithmatic, reading, writing, and Spanish. Mostly though, they played. DD loved it.

I feel quite honoured at the suggestion Mrs D and ' that diazepam person' are one and the same

Not true at all btw. Hard as it is to believe that there are at least two people who disagree with you !

Door.
Arse.

I haven't been any more insulting than any of you

Clearly untrue as HQ deleted one of your posts.

Cookiemonster - " We often found that when left to it, many children went down the shove-a-load-of-glitter-on style of creating".

If glitter was too attractive and seemed to be taking over as a creative medium, or if the children were not pushing themselves to explore other materials, then why supply it? (Children not exploring other materials is really the only reason to take away any particular item from the art area. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with any single material.)

Gandalf - "It looks like this was a create a beach activity rather than any old picture. I remember the day nursery showed my daughter an easy technique for drawing a cat and it really got her started drawing more meaningful pictures where she'd only done scribbles and a big mess of paint prior to that."
No matter what sort of activity it was, when faced with a table stocked with materials a child should be allowed to produce their own take on the topic, which is always meaningful no matter how splodgy it may look. Providing a template for children at nursery age (and even well beyond) will defeat the primary purpose of the creative endeavour, which in fine arts is always to give form to an individual inner vision. The process involves a huge amount of exercise of the intellect, even if the end result is 'mess'. The process by which a child arrives at the end product is always more important than the end product.

Totally agree with OP and think there is a lot of ignorance on display in this thread. Spent 6yrs advising to ECE teachers and come up against this problem a lot, teachers' inability to separate their need for a nice looking product over the child's right to explore. (Not in UK) This was particularly the case with teachers trained in India and China. Thankfully there are also many teachers who are up to date with ECE best practice too.

Watching my children grow up and experiment with art, I noticed they were never very interested in the finished product at this age. It was the adults who were asking them what they were drawing and (insincerely) praising the pictures they created.

Once they got to the age where they were trying to copy life, they noticed that their pictures didn't look like what they were copying, and they reacted in different ways: one worked hard to learn how to draw well; one lost interest; one came up with a stylised way of drawing which was basically copying someone else's formula.

I think letting kids enjoy the process, and maybe occasionally showing them a new material or a good way of enjoying materials they are already familiar with, lets them keep their childlike enjoyment for longer.

You are definitely not being unreasonable, and this teacher is not working adequately within the EYFS. For all of those saying that copying is an important skill... really. All this activity would have achieved is squashing any glimmer of creativity that the child has.

I would raise it with them & ask what their balance of child led creative activities are, and get them to explain what the value was in this activity. You are definitely allowed to ask these things. I wouldn't want any teacher leading an activity like this in my nursery.

Nightmonkey- I am also a qualified teacher, I have also worked with several excellent childcare practitioners, who didn't need to go to teacher's college to know that manipulating a child's work in this way is not best practice.

The definition of creativity is "the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness."

The EYFS states that teachers should be planning activities that encourage children to explore materials, that "encourage and support the inventive ways in which children add, or mix media, or wallow in a particular
experience." and "Help children to gain confidence in their own way of
representing ideas."

The teacher in this scenario was doing none of that.

Mrs DeVere, please read what I have written before going off on one. I have not said the OP or anyone has no right to think about their children's development, in fact I did say I thought that the OP's concerns were valid ones.

I have also not used anything about what I do to 'further my tantrum'. I have simply stated what I do, as have many other people on here, to put into context my views on this. As someone else said earlier, you are the only one getting your knickers in a twist. Just calm down ffs.

With the best will in the world, you do seem awfully sure of what nightmonkey's motivations were mrs devere...I felt your confidence was unwarranted.