DRAWING, ETC.
The stories are an excellent source from which to draw material for expression in the various aesthetic exercises—drawing, paper cutting, modeling clay, or dramatization. Whatever the form, it should be the spontaneous portrayal of the child’s own imagery. However crude the product may be, if it is a genuine attempt at such expression, it has the essential element of an aesthetic creation and should have our respect as such. With a very little instruction in putting on sky and ground, in representing distance, progress will be rapid.
Drawing should be in a color medium, and be a daily exercise. Paper-cutting is of absorbing interest to children and is a form of school art that rapidly gives definiteness to the images of natural objects. It brings out a high degree of manual dexterity and offers almost as wide a scope for individual composition as drawing.
These exercises, not needing the teacher’s immediate direction, can take the place of the many forms of meaningless “busy work” that a misdirected ingenuity has devised for the purpose of keeping children “still.”