My job as a preschool aide has taught me a lot of things but one of the lessons I was reminded of recently was to lead the child lead. That everything I do with the children in group activities should be led and initiated by the children, and that I am merely their to follow along and assist.
I had four 3 year old boys with me and I asked them to draw a picture of themselves. I had envisioned adorable pictures with figures shaped like a ball/potato with some odd lines sticking out that were meant to be body parts. What I got instead from them was colorful scribble with no discernible pattern . I had them draw 3 seperate drawings and they all turned out to be colorful scribble. I was a bit worried I had someone explained the project in a wrong way to the boys but they were all very clear on the fact that the scribble were self-portraits. So I gave up and inquired about the drawing abilities of a 3 year old. Turns out they are still prone to scrabbling at this age :)
And I had the children point out their body parts among the scribble and they all did it with gusto. As it turns out they had a pretty arty perspective of their own selves but it was adorable. And the children were very proud of their projects which is what is most important.
I was able to get over my own pride that their projects must be perfect and should be in a certain way and enjoy them for what they were:the truly adorable scribbles of enthusiastic 3 year olds.
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