Motivating children art activity

A Perspective on Motivating Children Art Activity

The reading that I chose was called “A perspective on motivating children art activity” by Awogbade and Mabel Oluremi. The author starts the article by explaining the importance of art education how art helps children understand other subjects more clearly. The major theme from this reading was about how to gain motivation from Children in an art classroom. The article also shows the psychological concepts of motivations and its effects on Children art activities. The author focuses on the motivation from primary and second art school level students in Nigeria, which is located in the West Africa. The place like Nigeria, students lose interest in art due to a lack of motivation, poor instruction style, poor educational environment, and lack of qualified art teachers. The author talks about what art educators at Nigeria should focus on to motivate their students to participate and enjoy making art in the classrooms.

The reading refers that in order to get student’s attention from the audience, there should be some strategies in art in the classroom. In the reading, the author mentions that the motivation and achievements were closely related, and if there is achievement, then there will be motivation. More over, the author makes a list of what art educators should do to motivate their students.

1.     Knowing the children’s developmental stage and understanding of the children.

2.     Knowing their abilities and appropriate difficulty level of the material is important.

3.     Be more observant on what is important, meaningful, and interesting to students.

4.     Provide opportunities for discussions that will give more attention what art is, which will arose curiosity towards art making.

5.     Help students to identify and evaluate their art works as they work to trigger accomplishments.

6.     Be enthusiastic, insightful, and positive on commenting student’s work. This will encourage and motivate students in art making, and it will also enhance their interest even beyond the art room. Even obvious comments will help children gain interest in making art.

7.     If the teacher shows the love for the subject, it would occur to most students and they will take this seriously as well.  The attitude of the teacher alone will help and motivate the children’s interest.

The strength of this article was how the author brought up psychological concepts on motivations, which gave better understanding of why and how art educators should teach in ways that the article talked about. Also, this reading was pretty straight forward, so I didn’t have much hard time getting the main point of the article. The only thing I would recommend for this article was to talk more in-depth about the environment and how art education system looks like in Nigeria, since this article was specifically for students and educators in Nigeria.

From reading this article, I was able to connect this reading to my art clubs that I teach at work. I have limited amount of supplies and budget to run my art clubs, so students often loose their interest in making art. This article made me think back to my art club and how I can motivate students in making art. There were so many things that I was able to adapt from this reading, but I really liked how the author said the attitude of the teacher alone will help and motivate the children’s interest. This article made me think back to what kind of art educator I should become in the future.

Work cited

Mabel, O. A. (2013). A perspective on motivating children art activity. Ife Psychologia, 21(2), 128-132. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1440183911?accountid=13158