Monitoring and Documenting Preschool Children's Fine Art Creation

In the developmental and process planning of fine art activities, which is framed by the idea of a competent and rich child, preschool teacher's primary role is careful observation, listening and collecting various types of documentation, which helps with understanding children's learning process. Continuous monitoring of children's activities, precise and systematic collection of the documentation material (using various documentation techniques), and its interpretation provide integral insight into the course of fine art creative process and represent an inexhaustible source of ideas for planning further art activities. Documentation gives children additional insight into what they have been doing and saying. It also gives them an opportunity to build new knowledge on the basis of critical review of their own work and communication with peers and adults. In this context, documentation is an important tool for informing the parents about children's development, interests and needs, and of preschool teachers' professional development. The research included 207 preschool teachers. It examined the ways in which the preschool teachers monitor and document children's visual art activities. The results of the research involve the frequencies and ways of documenting the course of fine art creative activities and children's fine art works. The research also aimed at determining statistically significant difference between the preschool teachers in the frequency of documenting the course of fine art creative activities, in view of their education degree and years of work experience.