Improvisational Expressions in Children’s Drawing Activities:

Five-Year-Olds Manipulating the Drawing Frame and Their Approach toward New Drawings

Abstract

This study investigated how five- and six-year-old children produced improvised expressions by manipulating the drawing frame during daily drawing activities. Participatory observation was conducted over a one-year study period in four certified children’s nursery classes for five-year-olds. Drawing activity data were collected and analyzed qualitatively using Sawyer’s frame-level model. The results were as follows. (1) Children maintained/expanded the drawing frame using various “director voices,” which comprised utterances or drawing activities that encouraged a group to proceed. (2) Children strategically and contextually used implicit and explicit metacommunication. (3) Use of the director voice was not assumed by specific individuals; rather, children flexibly adopted others’ suggestions and instructed each other while drawing.