One of Madelyn’s favorite centers in preschool is the Art Center. She always comes home with somewhere between 6-10 art projects from the day. Her teacher encourages creativity through original art work. At the beginning of the year I waited and waited for those “cute” little art projects that I’ve seen other kids bring home. You know the ones… cut out the circles, glue them together, draw a face, etc. When they are finished every kid in the class has a project that looks exactly the same. Well, these projects never made their way home, and I soon found out why. The philosophy in Madelyn’s preschool class is that kids will develop their creative skills much better when given a blank piece of paper. I wasn’t sure how much I liked this idea at first, but quickly realized how important it was for Madelyn to design her own crafts each step of the way. In the beginning of the year, Chris and I often times had trouble knowing exactly what it was that she drew (although she would eagerly tell us). But over time, her pictures became extremely clear. It was amazing! I just had to get over the fact that she was going to be using A LOT of paper. A LOT. That was sometimes hard for me because I know what a paper crunch the district is always in come the end of the year. But I got over it. :)
Recently, we received a letter that one of Madelyn’s pictures was hanging in the district office on display. I was really excited, so during one of my meetings at the DAC, I stopped by the reception hallway to see it. I giggled as I walked slowly around the hallway looking at each picture (I am fairly certain that EVERY preschool kid’s picture was hanging on the wall).
I found it especially interesting that Madelyn’s picture was created by her and two of her friends, Rori and Tatum. I was not surprised at this as she is very social. There isn’t a night that goes by where she doesn’t tell us stories about her friends and what they did that day.
