The importance of working in partnership with parents is a key theme in Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage, especially when it comes to encouraging creativity.
We need to ask:
* How do parents feel about creativity?
* Do all parents feel the same?
* Are there differences based, perhaps, on age, culture, gender, class or faith?
There is no such thing as a typical parent! Values and traditions differ between individuals, and it is important that practitioners respect this and give parents opportunities to discuss and share their views.
Some early years practitioners express concern, and even annoyance, at certain parents' unwillingness to allow their child to freely explore materials such as paint, clay or water. The following example shows how one centre responded to parents' concern about messy play.
CASE STUDY: SUBJECT PLEASE During a home visit Simon's
parents voiced concerns at the centre's emphasis on creativity and the arts. They said they did not see the point of messy play. It ruined children's clothes and they wanted Simon kept away from such activities.
They were not alone in this view. While respecting the parents' viewpoint, staff felt that parents should see why the centre valued creativity and the arts.
The staff organised a series of day and evening workshops on mark-making to give parents an opportunity to explore the creative process with their children. They could paint on silk, create large-scale paintings while listening to music, and use inks and other materials to explore colour mixing and printing. At the end of each workshop, staff and parents discussed what had gone on and what parents thought the children had got from the experience.
Feedback was very positive. For several parents this was the first time since leaving school that they had painted, and they had rediscovered their own pleasure in mark-making.
Parents were impressed at children's level of concentration when absorbed in representing their ideas. After a few weeks Simon's parents started to bring his younger sister to the workshops so she could enjoy getting messy.
As his mother said, 'If they come home messy you know they've had a good day!'
POINTS TO CONSIDER
To establish a good relationship with parents and carers:
* Actively seek the views of all parents.
* Don't assume that the views of some are representative of all.
* Offer parents different ways of sharing their views - discussion groups, individual meetings, informal daily contact.
* Ensure that parents have a chance to share their children's creative experiences and see the satisfaction and enjoyment they gain.
* Use video footage and photography to preserve children's creative experiences to share their creativity with parents who may be unable to see it first hand.
* Give parents an opportunity to explore the thrill of creation for themselves - adults need to nurture and value their own creativity if they are to nurture and value children's creativity.
* See discussion as ongoing and developmental. Shared understandings take time to evolve, but are well worth the investment.
