Asking a child to draw a picture of a house, a tree, and a person is a pretty common assessment technique, and one I've been using with my own little ones for years. You can use it with anyone age 3 and up. There's actually an entire psychological evaluation centered around the exercise, but I don't quite take it that far, LOL!
The Waldorf community has a different take on the house--tree--person exercise. A 1999 edition of Gateways makes the following connections:
1. The house-- a picture of where the child is on earth. From that place the child goes out and comes in again in the process of meeting the world.
2. Tree-- indicates the child's connection with his etheric body... The tree is connected with the spiritual world and the earthly world, above and below. It is also a home.
3. Person-- shows the human being with an astral body. The house and tree in the pictures also indicate aspects of the human being.
I love the fat, round, tall characteristics of Nicholas's drawings. The lack of detail, the starkness, the archetypal quality to them. It's a fun exercise to keep these tucked away, asking for new ones to be drawn every once in a while.
3 comments:
Have you ever had a little one not want to draw a tree/house/person? I've got an almost 5yo who doesn't want to do so. He'll usually say that he doesn't know how or that he can't. Does that seem a bit odd?
Does he not like to draw in general? If it was really important to me, I might have a couple of times when the two of us draw together, and then once he was comfortable I would ask him to draw his own. Also maybe split it up and ask for one at a time rather than all three at once?
*loves* to draw, but mostly lines and large swaths of color - very bold in appearance typically. I had been going for the drawing together thing in the past. I'll just keep trying.
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