Preschool Crafts Are Wasting Everyone's Time, Here's Why

by ParentCo. April 25, 2016

This shift in mindset about the way preschoolers engage in creative work is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough, argues. Weirdly, the “process not product” fixation fails children by at once giving them too much instruction and not nearly enough, landing children and their caregivers in a kind of middle ground that is not always very beneficial — or even enjoyable, for that matter — for anyone involved. In many classrooms, “process art” keeps too much of the boring mimicry for which “crafts” were originally derided — while at the same time, it doesn’t provide “even the pretense of old-fashioned quality control or skill acquisition” that the older method at least offered, Christakis writes.
Erika Christakis is the author of The Importance of Being Little.
Source: Why Typical Preschool Crafts Are a Waste of Time



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