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?

anybody recommend books/resources on how the child-led art activities work properly? Honestly, at my dd's nursery I've observed again and again that a few materials are put out, and they're left to get on with it, with end results where I can't see what's been learned or what the goal was really. I'm sure this isn't supposed to be the case.

My art teacher always told me "you need to know the rules to be able to break the rules, otherwise you just end up with a mess". He referenced Les Dawson's piano playing (this was a long time ago!); he was an accomplished pianist, but intentionally playing wrong notes was what made his playing entertaining, his 'art'. He was subverting the rules.

I've always held onto this in my own creative endeavours, but- when it boils down to it- your son is 3. I think that he has no concept of 'art' really, so he should be allowed to make a mess and tear the sun in half and make it into a pair of ears or eyes, if that's what he wants to do!

However, maybe there's something in the EYFS curriculum about being able to represent actual things through creative means using different materials, ie. being able to reproduce things he sees in the real world and understand the difference? I'd get hold of a copy of the curriculum and have a squizz. Might put your mind at ease.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter how much self expression they have at preschool -in order to pass their art exams to become art students they will have to conform and follow prescribed methods, techniques etc.
My DD dropped art. She has own style of drawing , kind of graphic/cartoon style and she is good at it and enjoys it. But for the exam (Nat 5 - which is a Scottish equivalent of GCSE) - the coursework was very defined - she would not be allowed to do any of the set work (eg self portrait) in her style -or in fact anything in her style - no free choice. So she gave it up.
When I told an art lecturer about it (in passing) they went into a rant of how that explains why students turning up at university nowadays are good draughts people but not necessarily artists...

Sorry, I didn't mean to say "he has no concept of 'art' really", as in specifically referring to your son...I meant that statement to apply to all 3 year olds!

Fluffy duck syndrome (taken from an early years site)

Hate this type of activity

I thought you were going to say you saw a child being smacked or something, not a teacher being really nice and attentive to your child. Really where is the rolls eyes smiley when you need it!?

At 3 they are still learning hand-eye co-ordination, so art should be about getting used to "mark making", using brushes and pens, discovering the different properties of materials, e.g. pritt stick vs gloopy glue and tissue paper vs drawing paper. They are learning skills, like how to experiment with different materials, different colours - the adult is there to encourage the learning but not direct it e.g. "oh look, the yellow and blue paint has mixed together. What colour has that made?") this explains more about the importance of this function and how practitioners can facilitate.

If you look at the EYFS curriculum for this age group, it suggests the child

•Explores colour and how colours can be changed.

Meanwhile staff
•Talk about children’s growing interest in and use of colour
as they begin to find differences between colours.
•Demonstrate and teach skills and techniques associated
with the things children are doing, for example, show
them how to stop the paint from dripping

There is nothing about copying, making sure suns have to go at the top etc..

Talk to the staff. Do more creative stuff at home and it will balance out but YANBU.

WuTang, That poem was the reason I said the child was asked to paint a flower in my earlier post.

The OP's example doesn't seem that bad compared with some of what I see as a supply member of staff. A "sample" picture could be ok so long as it was used as a thing to be inspired by rather than pressure to copy it. I drew a couple of eyes and a mouth on a wooden tongue depressor the other day and left it on the craft table. A lot of the children did their own little people, and one child did 7 members of their family. Nobody was told to do anything.
Copying is also a handy skill to learn and You could do it creatively. Choice of materials, etc, but giving a child some shapes and step by step instructions of what to do could be a good lesson in positioning and descriptions (Put the yellow circle above the red square) but not creative.

Yanbu - I hate this and see it all the time! Children are still learning to hold s brush at this stage. I volunteer at playgroup and always see mums dutifully doing the craft activity for their kids. What's the point? How can kids grow up to be adults who think outside the box if they are never allowed to as children?

I don't want to overanalyse this, but the objective of the activity might have been understanding of language, of words such as 'above, below, under, over'. Or maybe it's just that the teacher or nursery assistant is not very good.

Such sarky comments. I agree OP... children need the freedom to create using their imagination. Unless it was a adult led activity... I dont see why she was instructing him where to put the sun.

Regardless if he is happy then they are doing something right

Actually it is a first world problem, but not in that way - the creative industries in the UK are growing at twice the rate of the wider economy, and is one of the key things keeping us globally competitive against emerging economies such as China etc. So it's pretty important creativity isn't schooled out of them at the early stages! Creative industries worth £10m an hour to economy

I can't believe some of the snippy comments on here. YANBU to notice this and be bothered by it. Unfortunately, I don't think it's uncommon it will probably be largely down to you to encourage him to express his creativity differently at home.

DM is a secondary school art teacher and the biggest problem she has is that so many kids are massively focused on producing something that 'looks good' but haven't got any skills when it comes to mark making with pencils or brushes.

They've been taught that a couple of 2d shapes represent a house - usually a square with a triangle roof - so when they have to start measuring distance and using perspective, and haven't yet mastered these things they produce work that they're not happy with and think they're rubbish.

All her colleagues are constantly trying to find new ways to get them to enjoy the process, rather than getting hung up on a very skewed idea of 'realistic'.

it's a bit grim, half the joy of being little is being creative how you like, it shouldn't be led by anyone, even at GCSE level art is so prescribed. put my son right off and he hardly draws now yet he was brilliant and loved it!

YNBU. Art is not about conforming. It's about creating. To me if the teacher tells him how to plan his picture. Then it's not his work.

I do understand where u are coming from, they probably don't always do 'copying', perhaps she made more of an effort to interact with ur son whilst u were there and it was just the first thing tht came into her head !

Perhaps the teacher felt under pressure while you were sat there, and was worried that if she had just let him draw freestyle you would have felt that she wasn't giving him enough support and guidance....

He's only been there a short while, you said - give it a few weeks, and I'm sure you will have plenty of unidentifiable squiggles and smudges sent home as well

But you can do creative stuff at home watching th DS can't you, so he's not missing out on either copying or creativity?

*with the DS!