Drawing Inside The Box

Jack Pezanosky, age 20 months “Inside a Box.”

Fort Worth, TX

4/1/2008

When working with very young children, it is beneficial for teachers to think “outside the box” in order to preserve and enhance a child’s natural curiosity.

In an effort to teach young children to control the movements of their drawing tools, they are often presented with coloring book–type pages and instructed to “stay inside the lines.” As an art teacher, it has been hard for Ranella Franklin, early childhood special education teacher at KinderFrogs School, to find any real value for coloring books, including the controlled movements’ goal.

Instead, she uses other activities, such as Drawing Inside the Box to achieve the same purpose, but in freer and more exploratory manner. The children actually color inside lids of boxes that have been attached to large paper, so the sides of the box lids provide a visual as well as a physical boundary that says, “stop.”

Drawing Inside Box Lids

Very young children and special needs students enjoy this activity -- the children in her class have special needs and range in age from 18 months to three years. The children always get excited when the teachers put out the big, table-size paper to color on. When Franklin added box lids, it was really fun to see how their interest was sparked as they moved all around the table to check out each lid. Some children colored a lot inside just one box, while others spent time drawing around the boxes, or coloring a little in each box lid. And, of course, one little “collector” enjoyed gathering the markers and putting them in and out of the box lids.

This experiential art lesson was quite a hit with all the children and also met Franklin’s goal of guiding children to make intentional efforts to grade their movements, yet allowing them to continue with their age-appropriate scribbling. Overall benefits included problem-solving skills, increased attention span, pre-writing skills, and the use of receptive and expressive language.

Objectives
To teach young children to grade/control their movements while using drawing tools; to increase attention span/focus/intention; to develop pre-writing and fine motor skills; and to build receptive and expressive language skills.

Procedure
• Cut a large piece of paper to fit the top of a table.
• Glue several box lids around on top of the paper (inside up) --- use plenty of glue and let it dry overnight.
• Provide drawing tools.
• Allow the children to draw inside, outside, and around the box lids. Provide language (in, out, around, etc.), and even directions, depending on a child’s ability level.

Extensions/Variations
Young children love to organize things in containers, so they may group their drawing materials inside some of the boxes. This could be extended to a sorting, matching, or classification game -- all red colors here and blue over there, all markers here and crayons there, etc.

Adaptations
This activity could easily be adapted for older children and/or others with special needs by varying the sizes of the box lids (could be decreased or increased) and/or additional drawing materials could be used (i.e., colored pencils, oil pastels, etc.). Also, the box lids could be secured onto individual desks.

“ ‘Drawing Inside The Box’ is not a specific or special method, rather it is an example of a lesson designed to meet the needs of students who are functioning at various levels of ability,” said Franklin. “I believe, as does Max van Manen, that when an educator uses ‘teacher eyes’ to assess the needs of her classroom, she will automatically and with great enthusiasm create new opportunities for learning at significant moments --- that's what thinking 'outside the box' is all about!”