The environment should reflect the adults' encouragement and acceptance of mistakes, risk-taking, innovation, and uniqueness, along with a certain amount of mess, noise, and freedom. This is not a matter of chaos, or of tight control, but instead something in between. Through workshops, adult education classes, or teamwork with an art teacher , parents can gain the confidence for, and experience the pleasure of, venturing some distance down the road of self-expression in a medium in which they did not know they could be successful. Their skill will then translate into the work with the children. Parents can provide the occasions for these adventures.
Children find it hard to be creative without any concrete inspiration.
Instead, they prefer to draw on the direct evidence of their senses or memories. For example, parents can encourage children to represent their knowledge and ideas before and after they have watched an absorbing show, taken a field trip, or observed and discussed an interesting plant or animal brought into class. Parents can put up a mirror or photos of the children so children can study their faces as they draw their self-portrait. All of these activities can be combined with a parent s and teacher s goals of gradually introducing children to new art materials and techniques. Parents need to continue to experiment and test alternatives to see what is effective in their situation.