Speaking and Communicating Podcast

For how much time they spend on the screen, they should be spending that with their hand skills. Because it's not just the hand in isolation, it's the eyes and it's their thinking. Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode, please log on to iTunes and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review. Let's get communicating. Now, one of the things when it comes to communication is how children learn, because that is how they usually communicate to us. Today, my guest, Tracy Cheney, she is a California Elementary Arts Specialist of the Year. She was in a think tank that wrote the Art Exemplary Program for the State. She's part of the team that wrote the Art Standards for California. And she's here to talk to us about how Children who actually take crayons and scribble versus children who swipe on their iPads have different Learning abilities and before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi Tracy Thank you for having me Yes, you are so passionate about it I said I have to at least have my listeners listen to you and Take together all that knowledge because you have so much to share It's something that not a lot of us think about, who parent or not. Right, that's true. You know, when we pivoted to Zoom three years ago, and we knew nothing, and we had to learn how to deliver our programs and all, I've realized since then that having Zoom, and we're all familiar with it now, I can actually reach parents that I couldn't beforehand. So it's very exciting to me, especially if we're talking about communication, being able to talk with parents of small children. Because actually our success in school starts when we're really little and it starts with crayons. You mentioned that in the introduction. And it's very surprising that this is true. The reason I'm in a very unique situation in a school because I teach all the kids in the school over several years. So if you start with me in pre-K or K, I'll still have you through fifth grade. And so I really have seen what's been happening with handheld electronics and what's in the hands of really small children every day makes a huge difference on their success in kindergarten, believe it or not. Hmm. So before we get into the meaty stuff, please give us a little bit of your background, how you got started in teaching and what made you decide out of all the subjects I've got to teach art. That's a good question. Well, and I've been doing it for a few decades off and on. I can't stay away actually, because it's so fascinating working with children and being in this position rather than a teacher who stays with a group of kids like through third grade. And then you start another group. I'm with those kids for their whole school career. And when I teach middle school, you know, I'm at that level and I get to see the results of what's happened. So I've had a very unique perspective in that way as an unusual position. Yeah, because we've cut art teachers more than once I've lost my job, but being an educator who gets to see the whole spectrum. And the vital part, that drawing plays in children's communication and their ability to have a good school experience. And we've tended to have this attitude of art being fluff and dispensable. You know, parents wanted our kids to have computer labs. And all of that, well, you don't get both. The very thing that children need to be able to communicate well, has been removed from their experience. And now with great alarm, I see what's happened even with babies, having an iPhone in front of their little eyes in the baby carrier. Yes, it's very seductive and it does keep kids quiet, but you have to realize the kids are not learning to communicate. They're. And how do they start by communicating first? They are getting language, but they're also drawing. They're reaching for a pen or a crayon. And that is being a natural human being. That is not, oh no, slap it away. No, no, we want them to do that. It's just like with, you cannot help your child crawl. You cannot make their teeth grow in. And the drawing that they need to do is coming from within them. And we've got to be careful that we're not short-circuiting that. Because what I saw, I taught in 14 schools in three states, all economics and the advent of the handheld electronics has made a difference. And I can't say that it's a positive difference when we're talking about this. But we'll argue with me. That's your prerogative, but I have taught thousands of kindergartners. And so you really see what's happened. We have kids coming to school less prepared, and yet school has gotten so much harder. and we're talking about our little ones. And so about the mid 2000s, first grade was shoved down into the kindergarten level. The coloring and all the lots of art, and you probably had that in your school experience, especially if you're buying. I'm 47, so there was no technology at the time even. That's right, there you go. So I know I'm talking to millennial parents who the rollout with technology was uneven with them in the schools, but then. The last of Gen Z is coming through the schools now. And that was our first totally digital natives that they've had it in their hands since they were small. And now we have Gen Alpha, I guess that's what they're being called, who are growing up now with it in their bassinets and they can operate the phones and the iPads and they're like one and a half. It seems like you're giving them academics, but really it's not. because academics for small children, is they start learning to communicate with the crayon and the pencil and making little marks. They may not look like anything to you. This is huge for a small child. They can't verbalize yet, their learning language, but this has to be coming along at the same time. And what you're making is the eye-hand coordination, you're developing the small muscles in their hands. They're learning about. the pressure, you don't get that on an iPad, how hard do you push? They need to do miles of scribbling and out of the scribbling starts to become marks. And they gain control of that material and then they can start making the most incredible human leap, which is realizing that symbols can stand for things. Now, if a child hasn't worked their way to that and you're trying to teach math, you're trying to teach a four, That is a hard concept when you haven't worked your way naturally to that through drawing. So this is their communication. Yes, they cry. We know all that. That's part of communication too. It is. I know a baby expert, you know, she can tell just in the little cry what that child wants, you know, it's like, so we are losing sight, I feel, of this really important work that a small child needs to do before they get to kindergarten so that they're ready for kindergarten. And the idea that, oh, we'll just wait and they'll get it at school. No, that's not going to happen. We have standards. We have all the state telling you what you have to do. And it is a train that moves forward. And what isn't there is very hard to pick up. And where I just got just so furious was seeing that we are labeling kids as maybe slow or we're flunking kindergartners. And I taught in a district in Texas, it was like, they didn't care how many times that kid flunked because you're gonna get this material. But the problem is you have to look at where the child is developmentally. You cannot teach beyond that. And by not paying attention to how they're drawing, because you know exactly where they are. So when I have a class come, and I like to work with a classroom teacher, And we have the kids like just draw their family. That seems like a very simple thing. But from that, you can see exactly where the kids are. You can see the kids that are ready to go on to read. They're ready. Now you start looking at their drawings. And if they're drawing, we're in their five, looking at what a typical three-year-old drawing is. It doesn't mean that they are learning delayed. It may be that they have had electronics and they have not. Instead of scribbling. Yeah. Scribbling is what's gonna get you into Harvard. Who knew that should be copyrighted? It's getting you the right start and it just pains me. Okay, so we've dropped cursive because if it's not taught on the state test, we're not teaching it. Okay, the kids can get by because they're typing. But there's so much in that, the fluidity and all of that and the patience and the focus. So what I'm seeing in middle school, kids coming in at sixth grade or seventh grade that have not had any art in elementary school. I am seeing more and more boys so crippled. I cannot undo if they're holding pencils like this. I can't undo that in a semester. They have been functioning, not eloquently, but for them, this is very hard because they can see at that age, I'm not drawing at the level that everybody else is. So we start shutting down. Are we keeping kids from the careers they should be going into because we're not addressing this? I believe that. We have known about these stages of drawing since the 1940s. I'm not telling you anything new. And the brain research really got going in the 1970s, and we do pay attention to that as educators. So I'm going, we are missing a step here. So who decided to cut the arts programs just because it's now replaced by computer labs at school? That is a district-by-district decision. It's like we have X amount of money for this. We have to do this. We need to do this. It's so much of the shove to me is coming from the colleges and information just exploding and we just keep packing it down there. So what we're expecting five-year-olds to do, they can do if they're prepared, but it just makes me so upset when we take away more of the art and the drawing in kindergarten. in favor of coding. We're coding with kindergartners. I'm sorry, but that to me... I saw someone advertising a coding camp for, I think it was 12-year-olds. So now it's gone to five years old? Well, I'm just saying you see the push down. It's like, well, this is what they need for jobs because we're always thinking education is about preparing people for life and for jobs. And we're going, okay, they're going to need this for a job. But I'm going, we are putting the cart And we're feeling like doing what's normal and natural in how you develop your communication as a small child that we're running over that instead of saying and realizing this is how a child develops. This is where they need to be in their drawing to be able to learn to read and write easily. And you can see it in their drawings. I'm just gonna show you. Please explain that more because a lot of us are not privy to this information. I know. When I work with a teacher, we have all the kids like draw their family or draw themselves, and you can put them up like on a line. I mean, you can already figure out your reading groups from that. And then you really need to look at the kids that are not at that level because what you're going to be trying to teach them is not necessarily at the level where they are because the children through drawing are developing their thinking. That thinking and drawing are totally related. And a small child. We're not trying to make them be better artists. You couldn't do that because this is an internal thing and they are communicating and they are processing. So that's what I'm seeing. Parents putting a phone in front of a baby's face. The child is not looking at the world and having to make judgments and figure things out. And they are operating in a 2D experience that's been created by adults. Yes, it's entertaining and yes, it's seductive. But that child not looking at the world, and then where you see the child starting to make sense of the world is with the crayons. And the stages that they go through are universal stages. But if you are circumventing your child from going through that, they still have to go through it at some point. At five years old, they're gonna still be scribbling only because they need to work through that spot. But kindergarten is expecting that you can already really draw at a particular stage. to be ready, because it's mental, and the child is ready for it. And so always trying to make kids fit into this, it just doesn't work. And then we have an unhappy experience in school, and school feels hard, you know, that continues all these years, when if we back up and look at where they were drawing at kindergarten, we can pinpoint what needs to happen. Can you see that? Yes. Okay. So for the purposes of those just listening, this is a drawing of a teacher. A person. It's a person. Okay. And I love the drawing, but when we see that a child is drawing the arms and the fingers like this, this is at about a three-year-old level, but this is a five-year-old child. In the same class, you have a child drawing like this. Now, this child didn't invent that image, but she copied it, but she's got the skill to be able to copy it. Right. So she was looking at a fifth grader who was originating the drawing, but she's got the skill to look at it and copy it and do it because she's come through years of drawing. Now, how does a teacher teach reading when you've got two children at such different levels? You can see the levels. You cannot teach this child the same thing, the one who is drawing. I don't even want to say it's an immature drawing because that's not what I want to say. It's... where the child is developmentally at this point. What this child happens to have no preschool and in the home situation, no crayons, no this, no that, and trying to function as a kindergartner. It's so important that we have this. So that's been my message to reach parents. We don't see parents until their children enroll in school. So there's five years there, or four if they're coming to preschool. but there's a whole super duper important time period there that we would never get to talk to parents until they're enrolled in school. And then what do you say? It's like, you know what? I had to tell parents, your child just needs to scribble, scroll, because there's stages of scribbling and you can see it starting to evolve and with it comes language. There's just a whole thing that comes together there. I just don't want school to be hard at all. It's a relatively simple fix. It's simple when I say give them crayons. It's just gotta be done. Just like reading out loud to kids, talking to your baby, when they get to be around two that they are doing all of this coloring, playing and feeding them good food. That's the five major things. And there were some billboards around LA that, you know, was like, read to your child, talk to your child, feed your child good food. But guess what you left off? the drive. Let them scribble. But if a parent, especially since the pandemic, and you also had, like you said, a time where you had to teach through Zoom, if a parent has a child at home, they are working from home, and they need to keep the child busy so that they don't get distracted while they are in their meetings. I think technology tends to keep the child more concentrated and engaged. Because scribbling, it's almost like they will get bored after five minutes and then they leave that. Whereas if you put the TV on or give them the iPad, they can sit for an hour while you are in your meeting for an hour. Yes, I have three grandkids. And I had grandkids living at my home that got stuck during the pandemic because they were here on spring break. They were with me through the pandemic and were teaching and my husband was a teacher. So we had, you know, four Zooms going at all times. I get that. I get how hard that is. Yeah, we experienced it. I don't want to say that every child loves drawing. You know, they don't. However, as parents, you need to provide that because there is no other way. I wish that need would go away. I think in education, we hope that we can leapfrog it, but you can't. And so if it means spending some time drawing with your child and you're not teaching them how to draw, but just that... Remember how they used to say, do you color outside the lines, within the lines? When you showed the one picture of the kid who copied, do I use my own favorite colors or do I color exactly the way the painting that I'm copying is? So all those decisions in your head as a child, that's when you start to think. Yeah. You are thinking, you are communicating. So we wanna be careful when we look at children's art that we don't go, oh, what is it? The child is very clear about what it is. They just don't have the skill yet to be able to do it. But if they don't practice, we get better at what we practice. If we are cutting them off from practice, they are not being able to get this key piece that's going to impact reading. It's going to impact math. It's going to impact their entire elementary experience. It's very tied to that because it has to do with brain development. So. you're actually seeing what your child is thinking. Crawling isn't easy, learning to walk isn't easy, but the child feels impelled to do it. Eventually everybody's doing it, they do it at different times and in their funny little ways. This is the same thing. So a child who might be reluctant because the technology is more fun, doesn't have to always be drawing. I mean, of course there's Play-Doh, but blocks and all those things are very important too. And one of the things that I was very interested in was there's a tendency to say that, oh, girls develop faster than boys. But I think really what it is, it's the subjects that girls tend to be interested in can be measured in school. But if we look at what boys are doing, especially in pre-K and K, where we're still allowing them to be children and develop in this way, boys have a spatial intelligence and you see it through the blocks and through the trucks. And that has a huge interest. And where does that come out? Well, I have moved a lot of times in my life and the guy that can come with the moving company and looks at everything in the house and tells me how much stuff I has and how that's going to fit in the truck and then they get it so precisely. And I'm just like, just get it in the truck. You know, I don't care. That is spatial intelligence at work and architects and engineers and all of that spatial intelligence, but we do so little of teaching that in school. And then we take away the art, which for most kids, when they're younger, they're visual learners. They may not like art particularly, but I am the teacher teaching in their style. That when we talk about the teachers who love to teach reading, and they do, and you have to be that way, you know, as a first grade teacher and a kindergarten teacher, and they love it, but they are a different type of learner. And they are teaching through audio, it's all of that to teach reading. We just keep taking away from kids from what they naturally do when they're at this age because they are not analytical thinkers. That's not going to deploy. We are kids, we live in our right brain, they have magical thinking. It's very hard for a small child to know, is this real or magic? I mean, it's all kind of the same. You lose that. left brain thinking, which I know we've heard all of those terms, but you know, it's the analytical side. It's talking. It's being precise. It's the right answer. You're working in right brain thinking and creative thinking. You're working in the unknown most of the time. Figure it out. You don't know. So when we are giving kids, they're spending a lot of time within games and all of that. They're not having that opportunity to work through longer problems. and the issue of learning to draw. And even as an art teacher, I don't teach kids how to draw at that level. We're introducing them to things like different kinds of lines, developing their perception. Oh, oh, that is a circle. Oh, okay, I can do that. And we practice those kinds of things so that they can make sense of what they're seeing and actually be able to capture it. That's really important. But we need to make sure, and it's impossible. that we are addressing these needs so that our kids can go on into the careers that they'd like to. But with girls, I just noticed it's gotten younger and younger. Their first critical thinking is about themselves and their abilities and comparing artwork and then thinking, I can't do it. Don't tell me that when you're nine years old. You don't know that. Let's keep practicing. Let's keep doing it. Exactly. You're still young enough. Yeah. And you know when they talk about all the subconscious things you were fed and how you're just living on autopilot because they only say that age of zero to seven, that's the critical age where you like a sponge, everything you hear you absorb and then you become the grown up that from age zero to seven, how they resolve conflict, that's how you're going to resolve conflict, how they communicate it, that's how you're going to communicate. So if that kindergarten age you're talking about, and you miss out on this natural ability to learn through scribbling and art, sounds like that's also the critical period. If you miss out on that, there's gonna be problems later. It is critical in that you have come to that information from within yourself. It's not coming from without you. It's coming from within you and that you're figuring those things out. It's not that you can't get it, but... I certainly do encourage, especially if I'm talking about in junior high with boys that are just very hampered and just doodling. I'm not telling them to scribble necessarily, but they need a lot of experience to be doodling. The problem is when we get to that age, now we're putting a grade on it. So you're great being judged. They can't just freely express themselves. And you know, it's like, if you will do this at home, you know, a child. just practice at home because that's what you need to be doing. And it doesn't have to look like anything, but now they can see, because when you get to age 10, there is a human development hump there. And that's when kids really want to know how to do realism. So it's interesting. Some people don't like teaching that age because it's called the struggle for realism for a reason. You're trying to make things look real. We may wish that they could just work in the abstract, but that's not where they are. They want. to know how to do things and make it look real. That's important to them. Whereas when you're at the small age, it's in just a whole different realm. And some people really love that. It's far more spontaneous. It gets harder when we're at this point of really wanting to understand how to draw things. So yes, at that age, I am teaching kids how to break things down so that they can go forward in their drawing because that's what they need to do is keep doing it. Even if you think it doesn't look good, but think about yourself. where you are and how you judge yourself as your art ability. Some people have it, some people don't. Or it's a natural, or it's a gift. Well, I can tell you, I didn't have that. I taught third grade for a couple of years and then realized, gosh, I wish I'd gone to art school. I really want to know how to do that. And so I quit and went to a really hard art school with very talented people. And I was 25 and I did not have that background, but I had to work really hard to get it. because it was just something I felt like I had really missed out on. And so I understand that, and that's why I really like teaching it, because it wasn't something I got. And oh my gosh, being a 25 year old female with hot shot 18 year olds that were the tops in their high schools and they got all these scholarships in year with them. But you know what was interesting is they didn't have the work ethic that went with it always. And like I had to work, ugh. and talk about going through the comparison and being a female where that thing is rattling inside of you, you know, and you're fighting that within yourself. So I understand that. And so that's why I like teaching it because one, it is really important. And in this country, we used to be tops in innovation and other countries are beating us at that. And what did they beef up? They beefed up the art programs. They beefed up that creative thinking and being able to do all of that. And it makes a difference. It makes a difference. It was really interesting to talk with parents, you know, in parent-teacher conferences who own businesses and they would say, yeah, we hired the young people because we wanted their creativity. And they said, they can't think outside of the box because they've been taught there's one right answer. And they're kind of dependent upon that. And it was so interesting. to hear that from the employer's standpoint that really creative thinking and teaching to be able to think creatively is taught just like you're teaching math and other things, teaching all of that. And we spend a lot of time on all of that, but I think we've kind of lost track of, we kind of need both. Sometimes like at conferences, I talk with teachers about what's happening when they give an art project in their classroom. And so many of them are going, I'll never do that again. Because the whole dynamic in the classroom changes. And you've had a classroom very calm and it's very based on left brain teaching. We've got the spelling words up with you. We've got all of that. But we're supposed to be teaching the other stuff, but we don't know how to teach it. And you're asking a teacher, I have a theory about this, that we will cut art teachers, but we don't cut music teachers. And I've thought about that. And it's because we have this idea that anybody can teach art. anybody can teach PE, but a teacher's not going to open their mouth and sing in front of their class. If they don't like it. That's my theory. It's like, okay, anybody can teach art. But really, that is not so. You know, you push a teacher into doing something. Okay, we're going to do this project. And one, they don't really know how to set it up and go through all the steps. And the kids aren't prepared. It reverses so many roles in the classroom because the kids that feel like they're the artistic ones, They're having the worst time because they feel like they should be able to look great. And they're such perfectionists. And so they're having a breakdown. And you've got the kids who are like the math and science boys that tell you, oh, I don't do art. And now you're expecting them to be able to do this and they have no context. They don't have any practice at it. Things get messy. So what do we do with creative projects? We send them home. We give it for homework for the parents. monitor the project and teach them how to do it. But it's the skill too, to work through a long project that you don't know what it's going to be. We push it on the parents who may or may not be feeling very artistic. And they're not happy about it. I'm sure it sounds like a lot on top of their actual jobs. Talk to us about the science behind how it teaches you coordination. When a child, a little child, is starting off reaching for the crayon or reaching for the pen. Part of it is just the thrill of making a mark. We have to be so excited about that for them. From inside, you know, it is a marvelous thing and they are learning how to make this thing work. So even if they're sitting in your lap and you're monitoring, so don't get pen all over everything else, but you're letting them have that experience. When we go through a lot of scribbling, And as I mentioned, there's about three stages of scribbling. And when a child is actually starting to make connections with the drawing, they're naming it, or there's a story going on in their head. You can't really tell what it is. Ask them to tell you about it because that's working their verbal, but see they're thinking you are witnessing them thinking and making sense of it and drawing it so out of the scribbles will start to come circles. is the easiest thing to do. Out of the circles is my favorite thing. Well, they're tadpole people. That's just have to call them that big head and these long little body with the stick legs. But what I love to tell parents, but look at what they're doing. They're drawing you. Your face has been in their face from the minute they were born and they're held up in your arms and they're looking up your nose and they. are starting to try and draw what they're used to seeing. You are a big head to them and they can't see where arms are coming from. No, no, they're little. But from their perspective of sitting on the floor, it does look like you have giant legs. That's what you look like to them. I just think they're marvelous. This is my favorite, when we see that emerge, you know your child's on their way because they are. really trying to draw what they see, then eventually they aren't really having a sense of counting, but they do know these things are there. And so when I was showing you that picture with many, many fingers and eventually they start paying attention to detail. They are aware of those things. Yes, the original smiley face, you know, two eyes and a big grin, that's, but they have been seeing you in their face. And to me, it's so... amazing and so logical that they are communicating that which is important to them and figuring it out on paper. Just like us, we don't draw perfectly the first time. This can take a while, but the kids have to have the materials to be able to do it. Small children only need a couple of colors. They do not need the 64 box of crayons. Just the primary color. Because you're making them having too much choice. That's not the important thing. Until they get to five when they've worked The color has nothing to do with like, well, there must be something wrong. The grass is green, but you're making it purple. It has nothing to do with the grass. The color, it's an internal choice that they are choosing. There's something, they may not even see the green grass yet. They may not see that. So we can't be correcting them. This is not a correcting thing. It's providing more opportunity and just provide more paper and provide time. And maybe it's like if you're cooking dinner, And you need to have the crayons out. And there's like 10 minutes of doing that before we run off and watch the show that we want to watch or something. You can build it into your routine. I think it's awesome if you have a flat sketchbook and a parent or sibling can draw with a small one. Not to tell the small one what to draw. Well, let them lead the conversation, but it can also be, you know, we were at the grocery store and remember when we saw the oranges, do you know that shape, that's a circle. and we can draw that and don't correct them if they don't color them orange. But having a conversation, the drawing's good for you too. You need it just as much to get out of our analytical thinking and get into a zone there, and you've experienced it different times. It feels so good when you're experiencing flow and time is not an issue. You can feel that within yourself. Why did adult coloring books take off? I'm about to say I buy adult coloring books because I've always considered myself as someone not artistic or creative. So adult coloring books, I find they do really help me get calm and just slow down from all the noise and chaos. They really help me get calm. So look what you're doing with your thinking. You've switched your thinking. You've switched to your creative thinking. You've switched to right brain thinking. However, we want to label this. You've switched out of the other and you know, time and all of that exists with left brain thinking and so much of our life has ordered that and we spend so much time at school with that. But this is equally important. I would say more so, but especially with a little child, that's where they actually live. I mean, even if we were talking about brain waves and all of that, that's where they are. So if you was the parent. can participate a little bit in their world. That is a wonderful communication tool for both of you. Just the feeling of it. Because yes, you're reading, having like the bedtime story and you're talking with them, but you're actually participating in their activity with them. You don't have to do the same thing. It can just be side by side and little kids actually totally interact really with each other. They'll play side by side. So you can have drawing side by side. It can be what you wanna do. but it does you a world of good. And it's a communication between you and your child in a nonverbal way, but that's where your child is and what they're developing, that nonverbal communication. This, when it feels good, you don't have to spend a lot of time doing it, but just the fact that you entered that experience with them and can have a conversation about what it is they're thinking about or what are they doing. They may not even be able to verbalize that to you. They don't have the language skills yet. but they are thinking about it because you're seeing it on the paper. And that's how they're currently communicating. Yeah. And they'll get the language, but this actually comes first. I mean, you know, all of that, yes, they are communicating with you in so many ways. And this is one of them. To me, this is academics for small children. Don't worry. Yeah, they'll get exposure. Yes, to the ABCs and you're reading and you're giving them inflection and you know, how we do a book, but at preschool, you know, there is an expectation. that you can sit and listen to a story. You as a parent just doing those kinds of things, you are communicating, this is how we work at school. You may not be at school yet, but by the time we go to kindergarten, there's already an expectation that kids know how to use scissors. They do know how to control a pencil. So when experienced kindergarten teachers say to me, I can't believe that I'm having to teach kids to color. I mean, that's quite an indictment. Can I tell a quick story about this story? So my boyfriend's oldest son, he's currently in medical school. The other day he said to me, wait a minute, I remember when we went to his first PTA meeting in kindergarten, the teacher said, in all my years of teaching in kindergarten, I have never seen a child who he cuts exactly on the life. And look how that translated to his job. We want that person. with such precision or a five-year-old deskie. Today's in medical school. Isn't that amazing? That's an exact story of what I'm saying. What you're doing in kindergarten is going to impact you in college. And you know, I mean, this little one could cut on a line, but kids just need to cut confetti. It doesn't really matter. They need to figure out how you move that, how that works. And they've been cutting like this and... Because see, those are all the fine motor skills and you need all of that to be successful in school. Hmm. And in life, I'm sure. Like you said, the critical thinking skills and coming to your own conclusions based on what you observe, that's life. And if we're taking it away from them by putting a screen in there, there's gonna be some screen time. If we can keep it away from them till they're at least two and then really monitor it. But what I say to parents is what's in the hands of small children. on a daily basis makes a big difference. So what you're putting in their hand, whether it's the iPad or whether it's some crayon time and for how much time they spend on the screen, they should be spending that with their hand skills. Cause it's not just the hand in isolation. It's the eyes and it's their thinking. We can read their stages. We can tell where they are, but they have to get there themselves by doing it. It's a doing growing up is a doing. The crayon preparation prepares those kids for being able to write sentences. And that's the expectation in kindergarten. Now, when I was in school, we wrote your name. Well, kindergarten was a half day. PlayStations. What you still see in most preschools, although I've seen even less and less art making. We made a bunch of copies on the Xerox and we're coloring in the pumpkin for Halloween. There's not original work. You know, that's one skill, but there still needs to be a lot of original work. But what we did in school is not what these kids are expected to be able to do. I mean, they're way smarter than us. They're getting introduced to college and they're getting introduced to a huge amount of information and expectation. And yes, if they're ready, they can do it. So they need to scribble. They do. It's the secret to success. Exactly. Tracy Cheney, the elementary arts specialist of the year in California. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. And I'm sure that any parent who's listening and they're wondering how do I start this with my child? Do you have any contact information for them to continue after listening to this episode? I do, you can go to my website, Tracy Cheney, and that's Cheney is C-H-E-N-E-Y. So Tracy Cheney without an E, Tracy, T-R-A-C-Y. c-h-e-n-e-y.com and look for the preschool tab. I do have an ebook that addresses all of these issues that we've been talking about. One thing that I've used, I actually developed this for preschool teachers in a school where I taught, because we can't assume, especially if all that's required is like 12 units, that you're gonna learn any of this in getting prepared to teach preschool. So the US government, has a sheet and you can get the US government one. What I did was I inserted an art piece of what a kid should be able to do at this age. This is the government one that we as teachers and pediatricians, everybody we use it to judge you know where kids are in stages. So what kids do at two years old, what they do at three. Is that available on your website for those who are listening? Okay. Right. So it tells you then what you should be looking for at each age and then when the kids are starting to transition to the next stage, you know, and it's not linear and we can't say, oh, well, they're going to do this and then go to that. No, and they circle around, you know, it's going to come as it comes. It's just to give you a guideline of what to look for because when I looked at the government website, there were so few things on there about art and drawing. It's kind of there. I thought, you know what, it's not explicit enough. And when we're asking teachers to be responsible for all of this, but you don't lay out what they should be doing, and that's not their specialty, it needed to be a little more explicit. So that's why you can pick up that on my website too and see, oh, well, this is what we should be seeing when we're starting to do closed shapes. Oh, when I'm gonna child naturally does that instead of just lines, but they catch the tail of it. Ah, now we're starting to be ready to learn to make letters. When we've come to that naturally, then yes, I understand now something about that. But until we get there, it's just kind of trying to make a little kid memorize things. Thank you for letting me tell you my passion project. My goal is just to let parents know and preschool teachers and Head Start don't shortcut this. It's very important and it is the work of small children. So make them do the work. Make them do the work. TracyCheney.com. Thank you so much for being on our show today. If any parent or teacher needs any resources, you will find them at TracyCheney.com. Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review, and we'll be with you next time.