How to Cultivate Students' Imagination in Art Class

Cao Yuhong's primary school art class is a compulsory art education class in the primary stage of compulsory education and an important way to educate students in aesthetic education. It plays an important role in enlightening wisdom, cultivating sentiment and promoting students' all-round development. "New Art Curriculum Standard" points out: "Make students improve their imagination and creativity in positive emotional expression". How to make students show bold imagination and innovation in every art class, and then achieve the educational goal of improving students' quality in an all-round way, is worth studying and discussing by every art teacher.

In the principle of "life education" put forward by the famous educator Mr. Chen Heqin, "children should be allowed to do what they can and think what they can." Children explore and discover for themselves, the knowledge they seek is the real knowledge, and the world they discover is the real world. " Nowadays, many people simply understand children's art education as teaching children to "learn to draw", that is, they never know how to draw, and never like to draw. There is such an example: students from a key primary school in China.

Immigrating to America, having their first art class, the teacher asked them to draw a Christmas tree. The China kid's painting skills surprised American teachers and children, because he painted so much that it was exactly the same as the one posted on the wall. However, when the teacher asked him to create one himself, the child couldn't write it for a long time. This classmate's art level is acceptable in domestic schools. People say, "China children have strong replication ability, but poor creativity."

Why is this happening? There are several factors. Social factors: People are used to using "image" to evaluate the quality of a child's painting, while ignoring the relationship between the child's physical and mental development and cognitive things. Teaching problems: Many art teachers only teach students to copy works because of lack of information or to save trouble. Some parents buy copied picture books for their children too early, which limits the development of students' thinking. Psychological research shows that children often understand things and the world through cognitive means such as seeing, touching, listening and smelling. Hegel pointed out in Aesthetics: "The most outstanding art itself is imagination." Therefore, in the current artistic activities, it is of great significance to give full play to children's imagination, cultivate children's thinking ability and improve children's artistic accomplishment.

First, understand children and sprout imagination in life.

Imagination is not limited by knowledge of nature, scientific rate, traditional ideas, moral habits, rules and regulations. And it can also break the real limitations in real images. It is by no means a mechanical copy of reality, so teachers can't evaluate children's works by "whether they are like". The number of imaginative elements in children's works depends largely on the teacher's evaluation. The teacher takes "image" as the standard this time, and the children's paintings will be close to "image" next time, losing their imagination. In painting activities, teachers can try to ask questions to make students change their thinking, affirm their imagination and avoid forming rigid and fixed thinking patterns. If you like "space travel", you can ask the students first: Today we are going to travel in space. How are you going to get there? Please don't be busy answering, use your head more, and then draw your own ideas. At this time, you will find all kinds of scenes: some students are sitting in the spaceship; Some take hot air balloons; Some fly with a pair of big wings; Some people use long ladders ... In short, ten students and ten unique ideas are all their own paintings. Ask students questions through the teacher: So, what did we see when we got to space? They used their rich imagination to draw exaggerated and distinctive space images. When teachers affirm children's imagination, they will be more exaggerated and their imagination will be more expanded. Therefore, teachers should ask more questions and affirm students in painting activities.

Guide them to exaggerate, misplace, deform, combine, disrupt and change the real image at will ... thus sprouting the imagination of every child. Children's imagination potential is huge, and their naive childlike interest and unique ideas often give people new enlightenment.

Second, use the living teaching materials of nature to inspire children's imagination. Mr. Chen Heqin, a famous educator, thinks that "nature and society are our living teaching materials" and he advocates that children "go to nature to learn directly and gain direct experience." Let nature stimulate children's imagination. Therefore, teachers should often take students out of the classroom, look for beautiful flowers, touch big trees and observe small animals on campus, so that children's interest will be activated at once and their imagination will be generated. For example, learning "The World of Flowers" can let children look for all kinds of flowers outdoors, and then let them freely say what colors they saw, what flowers they saw, what branches and leaves they saw, and reproduce the observed objects through students' memories. Teachers can also use pictures, physical projection, computers and other multimedia means to summarize, and connect with geometric figures, exaggeration and deformation, so that children can understand the differences of various flowers, but at the same time, teachers can encourage children to create a work about flowers according to their own imagination by using activities. As a result, the teacher will find that the children have drawn all kinds of flowers. On this basis, teachers can let students add pictures to their own paintings, and children will be more interested. Not only are flowers common to us, but dynamic scenes can also be drawn by children through their own imagination. Of course, various animals in the animal world are also our living teaching materials. When children see cute animals, they will express their image more actively. In nature, children actively explore knowledge and participate in activities. It can be seen that nature not only increases children's knowledge and experience, but also promotes their intellectual development and enriches their whole spiritual world.

The scenery in nature is varied and beautiful. Nature is the best classroom for children's painting activities. Appreciating the natural scenery opens the door for students to imagine, discover and create beauty.

Third, mobilize various senses and cultivate children's imagination.

Teachers can organize various activities to fully mobilize students' various sensory systems. Eighty percent of human brain information comes from vision, and "seeing" is an important way for students to know the world.

Observation is extremely important in artistic activities. Students' imagination and creativity can be further developed by observing objects, copying objects, adding pictures, decorating and coloring. Let children close their eyes and smell all kinds of smells, imagine while smelling, stimulate their olfactory system, and then express their feelings in various colors through communication. Let children touch objects with different textures and rules, stimulate their tactile system, and then make bold descriptions through the guidance of teachers. Play a piece of music, let the children listen carefully, stimulate the children's auditory system, and let the children express their feelings after hearing the music with painting tools. These attempts will achieve good results, fully mobilize students' curiosity, enthusiasm and desire to explore, and cultivate their imagination.

4. Appreciate the works and stimulate children's imagination. Children's paintings are full of individuality, and there are many parts worth learning from each other, which can stimulate children's imagination and creative potential. Therefore, it is very important for teachers to purposefully guide students to learn from their peers. By appreciating the creative performance of children at home and abroad, guide them to imagine and create on the basis of learning; After students finish their works, teachers can show all their works, guide students to appreciate and discover the advantages of others' works. Appreciating and observing the works of masters is also a common form of children's painting. The works of Van Gogh, Miro, Picasso and Monet subtly cultivate students' aesthetic ability. Let students find and discover in the ocean of art through different channels to help them broaden their horizons and stimulate their imagination.

Einstein also believes that "imagination is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited, and imagination summarizes everything in the world, promotes progress and is the source of knowledge evolution." Therefore, to cultivate children's imagination, we should also combine art activities with other disciplines, so that children can spread their imagination wings and fly freely in comprehensive educational activities.