Observational Drawing for Fifth and Sixth Grade

Cassidy Young, Jin Yi Kim, and I have been assigned to teach fifth and sixth grade during this fall’s Saturday Art School. I requested the older group of students on our placement questionnaire due to the assessment I have made that I enjoy interaction with older children slightly more than that with young children. Thursday after completing our first in-class group interaction I left feeling a little insecure about the notions I hold of 10-12-year old children’s interests. Our group project involved drawing a picture to illustrate a story-time narrative prompt that was somewhat a kin to the Candy Land board game. I feel our age group of children are bordering their teenage years and while most still participate in play, make-believe, and discovery, it is at a richer, more mature, social, and scientific level. These are our Harry Potter and Percy Jackson readers, our iPod listeners, Minecraft building, Kobe Bryant and Taylor Swift fans. I hold that they are capable of negotiating more mature fantasy realms as well as adult concepts and circumstances and should be allowed some opportunity to express and think critically about what they are learning about life while still enjoying the innocence and shelter of childhood. After reading Smith’s Observation Drawing with Children (1998) I feel a lot more confident in my expectations of fifth and sixth grade as some of my notions were validated in the chapter specifically about our group of kids.

I agree with Goldstein’s (1977) approach to observational drawing as responsive drawing. Observational drawing requires the artist to observe closely details of the object(s) that may have gone unnoticed if not trying to represent them on paper. It also draws out the artist’s experience and or inexperience with the object by challenging them to recreate the unique, personal understanding they hold of the object. As explained by Smith (1998) “…a 7-year-old’s figure drawing carries sufficient information for her, but not for many adults” (7). Observational drawing is about communicating one’s individual experience with the object presented. As the child grows in age and experience, their representation of items they draw will change and evolve communicating new meanings representative of their collected experiences and knowledge. Smith (1998) explains the developmental framework of fifth and sixth graders as being “on the edge of adolescence…beginning to struggle with the inner conflict of establishing their own identities and becoming individuals separate from their families” yet also “scrambling for acceptance within one group or another” (86). I remember being eleven years old and making that conscious step from being a little girl who loved playing with action figures and stuffed animals to a girl who chose to play with make-up and listen to rock music like the rest of her friends. It was rough! It seems this is the age when many children trade imagination and make-believe for social activity and seeking out truths about life. Having realized that while reading and reflecting, I question how our group will tackle that challenge of provoking participation in creating imaginary worlds in a group of kiddos who may be experimenting with a separation from that sort of play.