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[#1]

My mom, a former first grade teacher, passed along this very useful phrase as I started babysitting and counseling at day camps where children would proudly present their latest masterpieces that were often hard to recognize.  I’d learned the hard way that exclaiming “oh, what a wonderful elephant” when the child had, in fact, drawn his grandmother’s new kitten, could result in downcast eyes or words of understandable indignation.  Simply saying “tell me about your picture” not only avoided such blunders, but it often did something powerful in terms of literacy development as well.  It invited children to clarify—and often expand upon—the messages they intended to convey with their drawings. 

Later, in graduate school, a professor once remarked that literacy is really all about conveying meaning and making meaning, expressing ideas and understanding ideas.  This stuck with me, and still rings true from my perspective.  For children, particularly those who are not yet writing, or who struggle to get words on paper, using drawings or other forms of graphic representation is an essential springboard for communicating thoughts and ideas that may be more complex than what they are currently able to capture in sentences and paragraphs.  Asking a child to tell you about the drawing of his family standing in front of a tent can launch into a full-blown account of last summer’s camping trip, and better yet, prompt the child to revisit the picture and incorporate even more visual details.  Revising and refining, just like an author with a piece of text.

In addition to expressing their thoughts or showing what they know, children can use drawing to build and refine their understanding of new concepts and ideas.  In the same way scientists identify trends and patterns from written observations, children can, as educational researcher Margaret Brooks puts it, “draw to learn,” and create pictures to record the life cycle of a butterfly.  Creating and sharing these graphic logs with others allows children to develop oral language and deepen their conceptual understandings as they explain and compare what they noticed.

So whether it’s recording scientific observations or drawing a rocket ship headed to the moon, enjoy listening as your child responds to “tell me about your picture.”