The document explores stages of children's creative development, focusing on their drawings and the meanings behind their art. It discusses factors influencing artistic expression including physical, emotional, perceptual, and cognitive development, emphasizing that children's art reflects their individual experiences and developmental stages. Theories from various experts are noted, detailing how art evolves from scribbling to more complex representation, with implications for understanding and fostering creativity in early childhood education.

1. Children’s Creative
Development

2. Aim
 To understand children’s Creative development
 Context
 Purpose
 Response

3. Questions?
 Why do children draw and scribble?
 What does their art mean?
 Why do they draw stick figures?
 What a child to take up a pencil and draw?
 What does it mean?
 Why is it important?

4. Making sense of Children’s
Art
 Easier to appreciate children’s art rather than
understand or explain it?

5. General childhood
development
 From simple to complex
 From general to specific
 From head to toe
 From inner to outer

6. Areas of development
 Physical development
 Cognitive (or intellectual)
development
 Linguistic development
 Emotional development
 Social development

7. Stages of creative
development

8. Stages of creative
development
 Scribble

9. Focus of inquiry
 What children choose to include or
represent (content)
 How children create (process)
 Why children create (motive)
 What they create as a result
(product)

10. Content
 Refers to the subject matter or
object being presented
 Content is often very personal
 Representations may operate on a
number of levels: for example
those not intended as
communication or as a exploration
of the physical nature of the body

11.  Adults often seek to apply
meaning where there may be
none or various

12. Process
 The actions and skills involved
 Cutting, tearing, rolling, painting, marking etc
 Not all process will lead to a finished art product
 Enjoyed for its own sake

13. Motive
 The reason underlying a child’s art
 Adults may explore work in relation to
‘what does it mean?’
 The child’s motivations vary from
wanting to draw a cartoon after
seeing it on TV, to hearing the sound
of the marker pushed hard against
the paper, to drawing their
experience of a family day out as a
gift to a relative

14. Product
 Refers to the final outcome

15. Misinterpretation
 There is a risk of misinterpretation – reading too much
into the art
 Study of individual children over extended period will
however reveal patterns and trends (style)

16. Theories and stages
Explanations
1. Physical theory
2. Emotional theory
3. Perceptual Theory
4. Cognitive Theory

17.  Developing creative confidence

18. Theories:
Physical
 The content, process, product,
and style of children’s art are
indicative of their limited physical
development
 Limited hand-eye coordination,
fine motor control, small muscle
development, manual dexterity
and visual acuity (sharpness)

19.  Young children’s drawings often appears
immature and unintelligible as they are
physically incapable of anything else
 Could a child ‘intend’ on drawing
‘something’?
 Imitation of adults or other children?

20. Emotional
 The content and style of children’s art
is indicative of their emotional
makeup, personality, temperament,
and affective style
 Significant objects, people, emotions
and events are emphasized,
exaggerated, distorted by expressive
use of colour, size, shape, line,
texture, and overall treatment

21.  Distortion and exaggeration are used to
display emphasis and communicate

22. Perceptual
 The content and style of children’s art reflects their
perceptual development
 Not the same as physical
 Perception is influenced by the neurophysiological
structure, personality, and prior learning

23.  The child draws what he or she perceives rather
than what he or she actually sees.
 Gaps:
 Art education – create the structural equivalent of the
perceived 3-d object on 2-d.
 Expressive therapeutic Art – Used as a vehicle for
communication and exploration

24. Cognitive
 The content and style of children’s art is
indicative of general intelligence and a
function of conceptualisation
 Children can only draw what they know
 The concept of the object will determine
how that object will be represented
 Young children rely on memories, images,
experiences and concepts

28. Experiment….and discover

29. Goodenough (1975)
DRAW A MAN test
 Non-verbal measure of intelligence
 It is assumed that the child’s drawing
of the human figure is a reflection of
that child’s concept of a man
 Conceptual maturity: appearance of
limbs and location, size and
relationship of body parts
 Accurate drawing = high intelligence

43.  Disadvantages: neglect of individual
differences, experiences, and motivational,
attitudinal, and environmental factors that
can foster or inhibit concept formation.
 Ears may be particularly relevant to a young
girl with pierced ears.
 Omission of parts may be due to a whim
rather than knowledge, lack of time or
interest.
 Knowledge can improve observation and
via versa.

44. Development
 Global
 General developmental: incorperates social, cultural,
personality, and environmental factors as well as
elements of former explainations
 Stage sequence
 Holistic

45. Knowing the stages will help:
 Understand where a child is developmentally
 Set appropriate but flexible expectations, neither too
high or too low
 Plan a developmentally appropriate art program

46.  Serve as a framework for evaluation and for
conferences with parents
 Appreciate the process and products of during the
early years

47.  Artistic development follows a predictable sequence
 Fluid: can move back and forth
 Individual: own rate and pace

49. Kellogg(1969)
 Scribble: foundation of future art
 20 basic scribbles

51.  As the child proceeds from scribbling to picture
making, he or she passes through stages: placement,
shape, design, and pictorial.

52. Placement
 17 different placement patterns by age 2

53. Shape
 Diagrams or gestalts contain shapes including a circle, a cross,
square, and rectangle

54. Design
 Two diagrams are put together to make combines

55.  3 or more diagrams constitute an aggregate
 4-5 pictorial stage
 Universal across humans

56. Pictorial
 Structured designs begin to look like objects
 1. Early pictorial
 2. Later pictorial

57. Stages
 Manipulative stage: processing, exploring, making,
doing, or playing with materials
 Representation stage: concern about artwork looking
like something

58. Cognitive
 Combination of cognitive and general
developmental
 Piaget: sensory-motor, concrete activity
to symbolic, higher-order conceptual
functioning
 Piaget: the graphic image is a form of
semiotic or symbolic function, and as
such is a representational activity that is
considered to be half-way between
symbolic play and mental image

59.  It is like play in its functional pleasure and
assimilation (incorporation) and like the
mental image in its effort at imitating the
real
 Piaget and Inhelder (1969), the very first
form of drawing does not seem imitative
but is more like pure play.
 Child realises marks and tries to repeat
them from memory. The child moves to
intention of action

60. Piaget’s stages
 Sensory motor (0-2)
 Preoperational (2-7)
 Pre-conceptual (2-4)
 Intuitive (4-7)
 Concrete operations (7-11)
 Formal operations (11 –adult)

61. Gardner (1980)
 Spontaneity of early creativity??
 Stage 1: Preschoolers; instinctively creative.
Fresh and unusual expression
 Stage 2: around 7 children’s imagination
appears stuck – stop creative process in
favour of language, games or peers
 8-10 search for literal meanings rather than
metaphors: copy and collect
 Literal thinking: emphasis on following rules

62.  Stage 3: 15-25 convergence of the abilities to plan a creative
project, implement, and evaluate it. Most people at this time
place emphasis on fixed information or skills. Creative individual
stands out as taking risks, attempting new projects and
preserving individuality

64. 3 year old ‘circles’

65. 4 year old ‘baby in belly

66. Lowenfeld & Brittain (1987)
 2-3 years – scribbling: beginning of self-expression
 1½-2½ Sub stage: Disordered and random scribbling
 2,2½-3 Sub stage: Controlled scribbling

67.  3,3½-4 Sub stage: Named scribbling
 4-7 pre-schematic
 7-9 schematic: achievement of a form concept
 9-12 dawning realism: the gang age
 12-14 pseudo-naturalistic/realistic drawing
 14-17 artistic decision: adolescent art