The Power of the Blank Page by Jane Danner

The Power of the Blank Page

By Miss Jane

Why aren’t there any coloring books at LifeWays? It’s a fair question. Coloring in the lines is a thing, isn’t it? And a skill to be mastered and prized and so much more accessible to our sensibilities than a bunch of scribbles. So, why aren’t there any coloring books at LifeWays There is, of course, a time and place for coloring books but we do not use them at LifeWays because there is so much to be learned about a child through their drawings; their experiences and interests. Ziggy, for instance, has been coloring whales. Blue whales and red whales and green whales, where they live and what they are doing and eating. It is a rich whale world imagination full of story. Every whale he draws is different and each whale has its own story that he is eager to share with us. Last week after the heavy rainstorms kept us in for a morning, Theo, Ellis, and Aurelia were all thundering their papers with raindrops. Francis joined in the fun as well. I am usually helping children in the bathroom while the rest of the children are drawing and I could hear the colored raindrops hammering their papers all the way down the hall! It was a purely physical experience of that heavy rain.

This past summer, Quentin and Akira were into drawing maps. Maps of their rooms, treasure maps, maps of the forest. Sometimes it is a challenge to see through the children’s eyes into their drawings but it is a truly fascinating practice to try and do so. Sometimes you just have to take their word for it. A map, huh? Cool!! You cannot get that kind of glimpse into a child’s rich imagination from a coloring book illustration.

There are other things to learn about the children and their development. All children across cultures and continents follow a similar progression of drawings; vertical scribbles turn into V’s which then turn into rounded shapes and finally an enclosed circle! Soon afterward there are circles with faces and soon after that the circles start to have limbs. Often when this happens, a teacher will notice that the child is making huge strides in their physical development. Able to climb trees when before they had been timid, less clumsy overall and running with a more graceful stride, they suddenly learned how to ride a balance bike or scooter. When I was a kindergarten teacher, I would start to see ladder like figures in the children’s drawings shortly before the child would lose their first tooth! It isn’t a formula. But it is a similar pattern seen all around the world. 

I believe all children are artists. So, it is a joy to see how much our children love to draw and are not intimidated at all by a blank page. As a kindergarten teacher, I would encounter children who would not draw because they had already been convinced that they “could not” draw. Often, it would take me a whole year to convince that child that they could draw, that everyone can draw. I do blame coloring books, though I have no proof to back up my theory, only the circumstantial evidence I see every day with an enthusiastic suite full of children who know that they know how to draw.