Art for all ages

By Prasad Abu Bakr

Children are drawn towards expressing themselves better and at an early stage of their growing years, when they are given the opportunity to drawing doodles – most children crave to draw things out of their imagination which can be verified as creative shapes not necessarily with any meaning – but if one ask them they will give it common name that the heard or they have seen and making an attempt to draw it to the best of their ability. 

Among the reasons why art in education is so important for kids, it has been proven that art can improve academic performance besides developing a child’s creativity, the skills they learn spill over into their academic achievements later in life, leading towards making decision as adults an easier task. 

There is no particular age to start sending your child to an art class but it is best that one start with preschoolers by the age of three to four and if they are already schooling from five to six years and others by the time they are in the range of seven years and above.

If one wants to know the benefits children receive when they attend art classes it can be stated that kids learning to work well with others and especially in an art class with other kids they learn to collaborate. When they are placed in group activities, they learn to work together towards achieving a common goal. In short, they learn to become team players, such children will develop into adults who can work in harmony with others. 

Young art students learn to become creative thinkers. They offer the world their unique points of view and interpretations of the world around them. They are fearless when it comes to expressing themselves through their artwork, because it’s a safe place for them. Their open-mindedness allows them to learn to improve all areas of their life through trial and error. They tend to grow into open-minded adults who learn how to solve problems

One can find more than one reason as to why growing children, or adults for that matter, needs to enroll in an art class. As with children they only get to experience childhood for such a short period of time and parents should let them express their creativity and the joy of childhood. 

As for growing adults it is something that they can fall back upon, especially when it comes to the many emotional situations young adults face, sometimes on a day to day basis – it helps one to take off one’s mind away from a persisting problem and look at it from a different perspective later – once one had expressed oneself through another medium closer to one’s heart.

The writer will be conducting art classes for both children and adults on separate days of the week at The Sapumal Foundation, 32/4, Barnes Place, Colombo 7. Please call 0774273781 for more details.