Process Not Product

The acquisition of a new skill is often forgotten in art projects and is truly the main focus.

Every Christmas at my daycare we pick out an art project from a magazine and wait for thousands of tiny little foam pieces to arrive at our center in the mail. This inevitably means a great deal of work for me and my co-workers as we sort and prepare each project for the kids.

By the time that the kids see the project, their involvement is minimal-- at most they have to pick up some of the little foam pieces and glue them onto a picture frame or a Christmas tree. I will readily admit that the projects end up looking extremely cute. The picture frames show the bright and smiling faces surrounded by multi-colored snowflakes, and the Christmas Trees have stars adorning their tops that leave just enough space for a child's smile and eyes to peek from the center. These are cute Christmas presents, but more so come from us as teachers than from the children.

These projects can never take the place of the messy, abstract, imprecise drawings that our children produce each and every day.

Recently, one of my fellow teachers did a project that was meant to emphasize teamwork between the students at our center. Each had a piece of paper with their name on it, and got to draw on it for exactly five seconds before having to pass it to the next child. This was repeated until each child had drawn on each picture. The results were that each picture was fairly similar and were very...abstract. But the importance was not the end project, but that they each get to take something home that all of their friends helped them to make.

If you want to read more about what constitutes "Process Oriented Art" check out my article, Process Oriented Art.