Give a 6 and 5 year old some scissors, tape and construction paper and you'll never know what happens. My two oldest have been creative wizards lately. Most days they create warships complete with USS Monitor-esque turrets and hundreds of cannons. Yesterday we made an Indian village together, complete with mini teepees, bear skins, even a campfire with paper logs and fire. Of course they made headresses for themselves, too.
It's so much fun to watch their minds think, and my how differently they do think! That's been most apparent in their drawings. My 5-yr old boy draws the wildest scenes of dinosaurs chomping other dinosaurs, aliens, spaceships and the like. I can tell he easily understands how something can go from a 2D piece of construction paper to a 3D recreation. My 6 yr-old daughter prefers to make abstract, geometric drawings, like checkerboards and a page full of fish scale shapes. Her paper creations are flat outlines with details drawn on. Both have their strengths; my challenge is to harness that and at the same time help develop their weaknesses.
Andrew Pudewa says that boys draw in verbs (battles and rocket ships blasting) and girls draw in nouns (houses and bunnies). I definitely think that is true and is a big help to know when you are teaching them.
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