Art and creativity is not the same for children as it is for adults.

Art for adults can have many meanings. Museums, starving artist in attics , lithographs, a cultural elite, etc.

Adults have come to expect certain things from art and art is usually centered around areas of external beauty and aesthetics.

Art for children is something very different, however and it is usually a means of expression.

As children grow their art grows and not necessarily along with what the adults thinks art is.

One of the problems with adults who are involved in children’s art is that they don’t have the patience to wait for the children to grow up to attempt to create some sort of representational art.

Never mind that museums are full of modern art pieces that most of us don’t understand unless the meaning are explained to us, but for some reason young children are expected to “make something” in art.

Classic preschool, kindergarten and after school programs for young children are comprised of crafts activities that often look like the image above.

A teacher created flower that the children are supposed to copy exactly as it is presented to them by the teacher.

A number of yeas ago a very famous songwriter named Harry Chapin wrote a song called flowers are red where he sings about a little boy that had to create red flowers and green leaves because that is what the teacher said it had to be.

That song always touched me very much as I was totally able to relate to that song, from my own childhood and in my work with children and art.

I put together these few images of a red and green flower as the first image as one that was created by an adult that the children has to copy.

If you look below however you will see flowers created by young children.

These were flowers created that were done by the children and thought up by the children.

The children were given the various materials and just given the assignment “Make flowers”

And they did.

And aren’t they beautiful?