Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From a language perspective crafts like this help kids learn concepts (color, size, location) and to follow directions.

-SLP

They don’t help with those concepts more than process art does, and they slow down other skills like perseverance, ideation and problem solving which process art develops.

— Special Educator

Can you say more about this?

Any suggestions or resources you can point to for how parents can sort of balance or counter the high volume of directions and templates at school?

OP here – thanks to those commiserating, lol. This was sort of throwaway rant/venting moment after receiving yet another teacher-made craft supposedly made by my kid but this time for Mother's Day.

This isn't exactly keeping me up at night, and no, I am not trying to save everything they make.

I've also spent enough time in classrooms, including as a teacher (but not an art one) and as a volunteer, to know there are many concepts they work on (shapes, etc.) so that's not lost on me.

I think what's been surprising to me is that, at least where we are, it's like this 100% of the time. Which in my gut just feels off. At preschool, they're still so little and they're building their sense of self and agency too. Let them live a little.

Anonymous wrote:Look into Reggio programs. It’s the opposite of what you describe and it’s amazing how the children really communicate through the 100 languages.

Yes, this!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn’t bother me at all. I love the little projects my kids do at preschool! At this age it’s more about developing fine motor skills than expressing creativity. Plus I have art supplies at home if they just want to draw something. Of all the things to worry about, this pretty low on my list.

Right- the ones I see include specific cutting and taking small pieces and pasting them. I used to totally agree about the creativity, but my kid would literally just scribble for 15 seconds but needs additional fine motor work. Even with the OT he does very specific activities that focus on fine motor development

+1
Sure, it’s great to give kids free art exploration time. But like this person’s kid, my boys just don’t care much for art and would just make a few lines on the paper before moving on to another activity. However, they really need the fine motor work. So I’m grateful to the teachers for giving activities that build those skills.

Hopefully the teachers are giving them plenty of fine motor practice all day. I had scissors and scrap paper in my sensory bins, sometimes straws or other objects. Playdough helps immensely with fine motor skills. I had small building manipulatives that the kids who didn’t love art could work with. Picking up smaller blocks to put them on top of each other. Rubber bands and peg boards. In the science corner they had tweezers and squeeze bottles. There were writing options for the students who wanted to write with thick pencils, plenty of paper or laminated sheets with whiteboard markers. It’s not just in art that the students developed fine motor skills. I often had boys who didn’t enjoy art, and they only times I made them were when it was Mother’s Day or something

When you see a child consider their art and plan and make decisions based on their own creation; it’s truly a beautiful thing!!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This doesn’t bother me at all. I love the little projects my kids do at preschool! At this age it’s more about developing fine motor skills than expressing creativity. Plus I have art supplies at home if they just want to draw something. Of all the things to worry about, this pretty low on my list.

Right- the ones I see include specific cutting and taking small pieces and pasting them. I used to totally agree about the creativity, but my kid would literally just scribble for 15 seconds but needs additional fine motor work. Even with the OT he does very specific activities that focus on fine motor development

+1
Sure, it’s great to give kids free art exploration time. But like this person’s kid, my boys just don’t care much for art and would just make a few lines on the paper before moving on to another activity. However, they really need the fine motor work. So I’m grateful to the teachers for giving activities that build those skills.

I feel bad for all the parents and teachers who are focused on kids this age “following directions.” Preschool process art is one of the last chances kids get to tap into an inner drive to make things. To solve problems and persevere. To form an idea, actualize it, fail and work through mistakes. It’s such a waste to have a 4 year old pursuing a teacher’s vision.

Think about the amount of frustration and the number of opportunities to develop plans young children used to encounter in their daily lives before schooling started so young and afterschool free play became structured. Art projects are one of the last domains where they can have some autonomy.

Teacher directed crafts are great if you want crafts made by teachers and not your kids.

As a former preschool teacher who focused on process art, I’m glad that you aren’t a fan of cookie cutter crafts. I felt like a lot of parents preferred the identifiable owl versus the hand painted abstractions that would come home when I left the easel out. But it’s SO good for them to feel unencumbered by rules for art of all things. There are many ways for them to gain fine motor skills and learn to follow directions than limiting their creativity with very proscribed art projects where the pieces are just so and the final outcome has to look exactly like the model.

I don’t like them but I just don’t care that much. I don’t think it’s that important.

Boy will you be disappointed when your child goes to kindergarten. Although maybe it's changed in the years since my kids were in k and 1st, but the vast majority of my volunteer time there was cutting up things that my kids then glued back together.

Agree that it's fine motor skill work - as is the connect the dots work sheets that you will hate even more