How Children Learn and Create Using Art, Play and Science

When children make beautiful drawings, we think it is wonderful. However, many adults find it hard to understand what young children are doing when they scribble, smear, or draw endless lines, and why it is so difficult to motivate older children to draw or paint.

How Children Learn and Create Using Art, Play and Science shows that creativity is so much more than drawing or painting something beautiful. It is a way of understanding the world through your hands and learning through art, play and science.

Drawing on the Reggio Emilia approach, among others, this book focuses on the process rather than the result and argues that children should be supported in experimenting with materials and mark-making. The authors challenge traditional setups where an adult demonstrates how it should be done, showing instead that an inspiring environment and open-ended resources trigger children’s intrinsic motivation. The book presents countless inexpensive possibilities that require little preparation and get children into a creative flow.

With its appealing full-colour photographs, this fully updated English edition offers inspiration, a sustainable and feasible vision, and tools for facilitating creative processes at school, in childcare centres, and at home. Full of practical guidance, it is essential reading for anyone working with children who want to help them develop into self-aware, creative, and responsible people.