Learning Through Drawing - My child loves to draw!
- Nov 14, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 5, 2021
The past week has been a steep learning curve for me. I was confronted with a couple of challenges at work, and for those who don't know, I work as a therapy assistant under the NDIS platform. Recently, I met with a child who is a drawing enthusiast. She often yearns to draw and could draw for hours straight. I wanted the session worthwhile, what is something I can do to make use of a drawing activity? My general goal was set, to increase her spontaneous communication as she is told by parents that she is passive and often limited in sentences social conversations.
This is more common among children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, they can be great artists who are just absolute fans of drawing, especially cartoon characters. My client, for instance, enjoys drawing wolf girls or number blocks.
As Davis (2005) remarks, art provides children the media for both internal representation (how they are as a person/their beliefs) and external representation (communication)
You might have heard of the idea of Art Therapy, it is a creative method to improve cognitive and sensorimotor skills, it encourages self-awareness, improves social skills, and resolves emotional and behavioural problems among children and adults (American Art Therapy Association, 2018).
In Aphasia (a disorder commonly resulting from a stroke), communication can be hugely impacted, severity ranges from frequent repetitions in a speech to being nonverbal.
Drawing can be an augmented tool, a means of communication for severe aphasia patients.
------SACCHETT, 2002
So ..... How do we encourage communication through art?
1. Give instructions!
Learning station:
Prepositions: on/ in /between/ behind / above /before/after
Sequence adverbs: first, then, next, finally
Vocabulary: such as colours, shapes, patterns
Here are 3 ways to do it:
Ask the child 'How can you achieve it/how are you going to draw it?', so they become the ones to explain it
Parents/carers give directions e.g. First, draw 5 red dots on the.../Please draw the head before the tail.
Self-talk/parallel talk: These 2 strategies can be incorporated in this and our next situation. Parallel talk means you are describing what the child is doing while self-talk simply means you are describing what you are doing. An example would be
Let's see, first, you drew the face, then now you are working on the legs.
2. Talk about how the art looks like
There are several things you may want to talk about
shapes
lines
colours
patterns
Here, feel free to ask or adapt self/parallel talk. An example of parallel talk here is 'I see you are drawing some curvy lines around the body.'
Learning areas:
Vocabulary: such as colours, shapes, patterns
Talk about feelings and emotions e.g. How is she feeling? Why is she feeling this way?
3. Be interested
How to show interest? Comment and ask!
To comment:
As simple as 'That looks interesting.' can suffice, don't forget to also be specific about the areas you are interested in e.g. I love the red colour on her dress, it is an attractive colour!' This shows them that you are genuinely paying attention to what they are doing, so they will be more willing to share about their art.
To ask:
(These tips to asking questions can also be adapted in our 1st and 2nd point)
Open-ended questions e.g. How do you find your drawing?
WH questions is a wonderful choice (what, when, who, where, why) e.g. What is she doing?
4. Create an art piece together!
Why not create an art piece together? This is a fantastic way to practice teamwork, especially when preparing them for school where group work is inevitable. They will learn to follow instructions, negotiate and distribute work during a task. This creates even more opportunities for your child to speak up in a naturalistic environment
E.g. Please hand me the blue pen, where is the blue pen? What do you think of drawing a blue hat?
Putting everything together:
Having done my research on ways to create conversations in art, I was quite happy, I wrote a list of questions and topic starters before my session. How did it go?
To start, my client prefers individual work so I acted as a guide, I adapted our first 3 situations, asking questions, and remained great interests. It was not until the child told me to stop that I realized I have been the only person speaking the whole time! What a success.
In my next session, I repeated what I did in my previous session, the only difference was that I began writing down her responses in such a way that she can see and read clearly (point forms with bold markers and in big clear words). Soon after, she became interested and even spontaneously share her drawing verbally. They were short responses but this is already a big success- she is excited to talk about her art!
Two weeks after, she took the initiative to write the names of the characters, she did a mini-presentation based on what was written. That was a big step up, and more importantly, there was no screaming or crying involved!
References:
American Art Therapy Association (2018). About Art Therapy. Available online at: https://arttherapy.org/about-art-therapy/ (Accessed June 18, 2018).
Davis, J. H. (2005) Framing Education as Art: the octopus has a good day. New York, NY: Teachers’ College Press.
SACCHETT, C. (2002). Drawing in aphasia: moving towards the interactive. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 57(4), 263–277. https://doi.org/10.1006/ijhc.2002.1018
I hope the above information and my experience have given you some insight or some tips on developing language skills in art enthusiasts. After all, it is all about working around your child's interests to create and fun and interesting learning experience.
Please let me know if you have tried any of these tips! Does it work or not?
Looking forward to hearing from you all.
Have a great day and don't forget to smile!
Joyce Lau
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