Five artists.
Five lessons.
Ready to run with three to six year olds this week, using what is already in your cupboard. Not simplified versions of them. Them.
Every lesson has the words to say, what it is building, and how to tell it worked.
Read this first
Every lesson runs on the same five steps
Learn the rhythm once and you can teach any of the five, then build your own. This is the part that transfers.
A story, a question, one real thing about the artist. Thirty seconds. They are deciding whether to come with you.
Name the tricky part before they meet it. “This bit goes wrong for everybody, including me.” Now when it goes wrong it is expected, not a failure.
One technique, demonstrated once, slowly, in silence if you can manage it. Every extra instruction costs you a child.
Walk, do not hover. Say nothing for the first few minutes. When you do speak, name what they did, never what it looks like.
Every child says one thing about their own work. Not what is it. Ask what the hardest bit was, or why that colour.
One material, not five. Choice is a load, not a kindness, at three.
No sample on the wall. The moment they can see what it should look like, the task changes from having an idea to matching yours.
Never finish it for them. Not a corner, not a line. They always know.
Talk about the doing. Not beautiful, not clever, not well done.
Lesson one
Yayoi Kusama
Dots. Density. Covering a surface.
Cotton buds. Two or three colours of paint. Paper. That is all.
“There is an artist called Yayoi Kusama. She is in her nineties and she has painted dots nearly every day of her life. Rooms of them. Whole pumpkins covered in them.”
“The tricky bit is stopping. Your hand will want to join them up into a line. See if you can keep them separate.”
Press and lift. Do not drag. Demonstrate three dots, slowly, and nothing else.
A cotton bud can only be held one way, between the thumb and two fingers, which is doing quiet work on their grip while you say nothing about it.
You put those ones very close together.
This corner is busy and this corner is quiet.
Both describe a decision they made. Neither is a compliment, and that is the point.
What it builds. The pincer grip, without a pencil in sight, and a first experience of pattern and density as decisions rather than accidents.
You will know it worked when a child starts making deliberate empty space. That is composition arriving on its own, and it usually turns up the second or third time you run it.
Lesson two
Mark Rothko
Big blocks of colour that feel like something.
The biggest paper you have. Thick brushes. Three colours, mixed a little watery.
“Mark Rothko painted pictures of nothing. No people, no houses, no animals. Just big soft squares of colour. People stand in front of them and cry.”
That last line lands with four year olds every time. A painting of nothing that makes someone cry is a genuinely interesting idea.
“The edges are going to go fuzzy where the colours meet. That is not a mistake. That is the best part.”
One band of colour across the top, one across the bottom. Fill the paper.
Let them touch in the middle and do not tidy it.
What does this colour feel like?
You let them blur into each other there.
The first question is the whole lesson. A three year old will answer it instantly and with total confidence.
What it builds. Colour as feeling rather than decoration, and the first idea that a picture does not have to be of something. It also covers a big surface fast, which builds the shoulder.
You will know it worked when a child defends their colour choice. “It has to be that one.” That is ownership, and it is rare before five.
Lesson three
Wassily Kandinsky
Circles inside circles. Colour you can hear.
Paper. Paint or oil pastels. Music, and a way to change the track halfway.
“Kandinsky could hear colours. When he listened to music he saw colours in front of him, and when he painted a colour he heard a sound. So he painted what the music looked like.”
“Circles are hard. Yours will be wobbly and so are mine. Wobbly is fine, we are not tracing anything.”
Start in the middle and work outwards, one ring at a time, changing colour each ring.
Put music on and change the track halfway through. Say nothing about the change and watch what happens to the colours.
What colour is that bit of the music?
You changed when the song changed.
Noticing that out loud is what turns an accident into a decision they can repeat.
What it builds. Wrist rotation, which is the exact movement a pencil needs later, and the beginning of the idea that one sense can describe another.
You will know it worked when a child tells you what a colour sounds like without being asked. The language arrives faster than you expect on this one.
Lesson four
Henri Matisse
Drawing with scissors. Moving things before you fix them.
Coloured paper. A glue stick. One big sheet each. No scissors for the three year olds.
“When Matisse got too unwell to stand up and paint, he did not stop. He sat in bed and cut shapes out of coloured paper instead, and called it drawing with scissors. He made some of his best work that way, right at the end.”
“Nothing gets stuck down until you are sure. You are allowed to move everything as many times as you like.”
Tear, do not cut, with the younger ones. One hand holds, the other pulls the opposite way.
That is bilateral coordination, and it is the thing a child needs before scissors make any sense at all.
Try it somewhere else before you stick it.
Why did that one go there?
The first one teaches revision, which almost nothing else in a three year old’s week does.
What it builds. Bilateral coordination through tearing, and composition as something you can change your mind about.
You will know it worked when a child moves a shape, steps back, and moves it again before reaching for the glue. That pause is the whole lesson.
Lesson five
Andy Goldsworthy
Made outside. Left behind.
Nothing at all. A garden, a yard, a footpath, and a camera or a phone.
“Andy Goldsworthy makes art outside with leaves and stones and ice, and then he leaves it there. The wind takes it, or the tide does. He takes one photograph and that is all that is left of it.”
“We are not taking this one home. That feels wrong and we are going to do it anyway.”
Sort before you arrange. Leaves by size, or stones by colour, lightest to darkest.
One rule, chosen by them, and then follow it. Say the not-taking-it-home part at the start, never at pack away. Sprung on them at the end it is a loss. Said first, it is the interesting part.
What order are you putting them in?
Shall we photograph it before the wind does?
Asking them to name the rule turns sorting into an idea they chose rather than a task you set.
What it builds. Sorting and sequencing, which is early maths in a different coat, and a first encounter with making something that is not meant to last.
You will know it worked when a child asks to go back and look at it the next day. Then you have the real conversation.
In the room
When it goes wrong
All five of these will happen in your first week. None of them mean the lesson was wrong.
“I can’t do it.”
Do not say yes you can. They have told you what they believe and you have contradicted them about themselves. Say “you can’t do it yet”, then make something badly in front of them and be pleased about it.
Three of them finish in ninety seconds.
You gave them the finished idea, or a sample. Remove it and there is no finish line to race to. Ask what else it could be, then walk away.
One will not start at all.
Let them watch. A cautious child is gathering information and cannot do that and participate at once. Say nothing, do not coax, and have the materials still out when they are ready.
“Can you draw it for me?”
Never. Ask what the hardest bit is and start there, on their paper, with their hand. Draw one for a child and you have shown them the standard they are not.
A parent asks why there is nothing to take home.
“She spent twenty minutes working out how to stop it falling over.” Name what the child did, in one sentence, before they have time to look at what she made. It works almost every time.
That last one is the one nobody teaches you, and it is the most useful sentence on this page. Knowing what to say to an adult is a separate skill from knowing what is right for the child.
Want these as a printable?
One page per lesson, for the trolley or the staff room. I will also send you the next guide when it is ready.
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If you want the rest
You now have five lessons. There are about forty more.
Every Say this line on this page came out of The Mini Ivy Method. So did the five step rhythm at the top.
What you do not have yet is the order to teach them in, how to turn anything a child is obsessed with into a fortnight of real work, or what to say in the twenty seconds after a child tells you they have ruined it.
See The Mini Ivy Method
Co-Founder, Mini Ivy Art Studio. I studied teaching at Flinders University and spent about eight years teaching reception to year two before starting Mini Ivy. We run structured creative development sessions for three to six year olds, five days a week, at our studio in Torrensville, Adelaide. Everything here is what we actually do on those days, not theory.