Drawing With Children (by Mona Brookes)

Currently, we are borrowing this book from the library, but it is so fabulous that I'm putting it on my wish list. Mona is an artist, who was asked by a pre-school administrator to put together a drawing curriculum of sorts for preschoolers. The administrator felt that not only was it possible to teach very young children how to draw realistically (referred to as representational drawing), but probably very beneficial to them as well. Long story short, Mona put together a very successful program that has since been implemented in public, private and home school settings; there are even Monart schools. Among other amazing revelations that studies of the Monart program have uncovered is that children who learned to draw realistically scored 20% better in math, reading and writing, likely related to the increase in concentration, visual perception and pattern recognition that comes with learning to draw. She explains that children naturally draw symbolically (i.e., stick figures) as part of their development, but they can also be taught to draw representationally (realistic drawing) without hindering the symbolic drawing that they intuitively do. In her book, she emphasizes the need for a safe, quiet environment that is non-competitive and non-comparative and recommends felt-tip markers as the medium of choice.

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