Lawrence.com

Just inside the door of this Lawrence Arts Center preschool classroom, a pair of rapt youngsters are poised over two spinning turntables.

Records have been swapped for white paper plates with holes poked through their centers. As her plate rotates, a little pigtailed brunette with pink-stained hands and shirt presses a magic marker against it, creating a tornado of lines and squiggles as her hand wanders. She giggles when the marker finds the plate's corrugated edge and makes a rapid-fire flicking noise.

She flips off the record player and, as it slows to a halt, raises her creation above her head.

"I did it!" she squeals.

"Yes you did, sweetie," her mom replies, smiling.

Across the room, dozens of similarly triumphant moments are playing out as children with paintbrushes, glue, sponges and wooden blocks do what children do best: let their imaginations run wild.

It's a safe bet none of these kids will grow up to be working artists, but that's not really the point.

"When she walks in that room, she knows she wants to wear the smock, and then she just kind of runs for the easel and she just starts painting. She just goes at it," says Richard Spencer, who's enrolled in this parent-child class with his 3-year-old daughter, Nicole. "I think it gives her a sense of independence. I think she feels there's nothing she can't do."

That's how all children should feel when it comes to creativity, according to Linda Reimond, whose been directing the center's arts-based preschool since it opened in 1985. And part of a parent's job is to encourage that feeling of freedom.

But how? What's the most beneficial way to talk to children about their art? And what about storing those masses of masterpieces they produce at home and school?

These dilemmas call for creative parents.

Thinking for themselves

It might sound counterintuitive, Reimond admits, but she feels pretty strongly about not saying "I like that" or "Good job" to child artists.

"'I like that' means that you're trying to please ME, and you don't want children to do that. You want it to come from within them," she says. "You want that intrinsic motivation instead of that external motivation for the kids."

And phrases such as "Good job" don't really mean anything, Reimond contends. Instead, parents should be specific: "Look at those colors," "Look at the way those lines go" or "You made several different textures."

"Then I hold it up and say, 'What do YOU like best about this?'" she says. "I want them to do it themselves, so that means they're thinking for themselves."

When children are 2 to 4 years old, as they are in this particular class, they're in what art education scholar Viktor Lowenfeld called the scribbling stage. They begin by making indistinguishable marks, move into patterned mark making and then begin assigning names to their marks -- even if the marks look nothing like a tree, car or whatever else they decide to call them.

It's important to avoid asking or trying to guess what children are drawing. Just listen to what they say, experts recommend.

Toward the end of this stage, kids will start drawing human heads, with legs, arms and other details appearing in time. The older children get, the more sophisticated their art becomes, with efforts at realistic drawing beginning around age 9.

During these developmental stages, parents should strive for gentle encouragement and realize the impact of letting children make their own choices, Reimond says.

"If you have practice making choices, hopefully you're able to make them better the older you get, when you have more difficult choices to make," she says. "One thing about art that I really feel is important is it's really a good tool for helping children to be problem solvers and creative thinkers."

Too much to keep

For 3-year-old Nicole Spencer, art has other benefits.

"It helps me when I sleep," she explains.

"How does it help you sleep?" her father, Richard, asks.

"When I come downstairs, I see beautiful pictures," Nicole says.

"Well, I guess it puts her mind at ease," Richard reasons. "Sometimes she doesn't want to go to sleep, so I think what she means is this helps her to feel good about going to sleep. Maybe it's the accomplishment itself."

One thing's certain: Nicole thrives on sharing her art with others.

"Her face lights up when her mom comes home and she gets to explain what sort of art she produced," Richard says. "She really seems to relive the whole art experience again at night explaining it to her mother."

Nicole's creations get tacked up on a pantry wall at the Spencer home. Carol Steele recently made a card out of a painting by her 3-year-old daughter, Micah, and sent it to Micah's grandmother.

"Another lady gave me the idea to use them for wrapping paper," Steele says. "Two we actually framed and we've got outside her room because they were just so pretty we couldn't throw them away. But we can't keep all of them; she just does too much."

So how do parents decide what to keep?

"You just kind of have to pick and choose," says Ellen Casagrande, daughter of 2-year-old Siena, the young lady in pigtails who loves the record player so much. "Some of it you pick for its own aesthetic value, and some of it you pick because you remember that they had a really good time doing it."

At this age, though, most parents and educators agree the process of creating is more important than the final product. It beefs up children's motor skills and builds their confidence to make decisions and solve problems down the road. Right now, for this handful of 2- and 3-year-olds, the possibilities are endless.

"Would you like to be an artist when you grow up?" Richard Spencer asks his daughter.

"Yeah," Nicole replies without a second thought.

"She's also said yes to doctor before," Richard says, laughing. "So we'll encourage art as a hobby."