a paintbrush or two

Children have a lot to teach us about creating.
Give them the tools, the space, and freedom, and they will create because they live and breathe possibility

Children's drawings can be roughly divided into three stages, similar to those found in their play and their painting. In the first phase, before age three, the child creates purely out of the movement that carries her. The process of creation arises in a dreamy way, out of the rhythms and movements coming from within her own body, so if you ask a very young child about her drawing, she will usually be unable to explain the content to you.

In the second phase, between ages of three and five, the child lets the arising picture take hold of her imagination. While she draws, she will tell you about the picture as it unfolds in front of her.

After the fifth year, the child often approaches coloring with a definite idea or picture in mind, "I am going to draw my dog, Blacy, chasing a rabbit."

Under the age of three, children draw spirals and these tend to go from outward to inward, gradually forming a center which reflects the child's growing realization of self. These spiral movements are thought to be echoes of the movements of the cosmos and of the flowing rhythms and the fluids within the young child's own body. After four, children draw people not as we see a person, but as he experiences his own self and body. The inner life processes, not the external form, are the determining factors.

Pretty amazing, eh?

From You Are Your Child's First Teacher by Rahima Baldwin Dancy

I have been thinking about creativity, as I get swept up in sewing, knitting, and otherwise making of things. I won't let this crafty-ness take me away from the deeper creative force that moves through me: to nurture these emerging beings into becoming their own unique selves.

Comments

[Summer McCreless]

I couldn't agree more! Wonderful!!!