New York City art teacher and writer Muriel Silberstein-Storfer tells this story about a classroom she once visited around St. Patrick's Day: The teacher had given each student a photocopied drawing of a leprechaun, and each child had dutifully colored in the picture: green for the suit, black for the belt and so on. The 25 or so pictures hanging around the room were practically identical.

"Next year, why not let everyone invent their own leprechaun?" Storfer suggested.

"I could do that," said the teacher. "But how will they know what a leprechaun looks like, unless I show them?"

Storfer paused. "But how do you know what a leprechaun looks like?"

For Storfer, who teaches parent-child studio workshops at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the anecdote serves to illuminate a key point about creativity and children. Too often, she says, we tend to emphasize the artistic result, the picture that looks "right," rather than the creative process, the expression of a child's original ideas. The good news is that the subtlest shifts in an adult's thinking are all that's needed to let a child's creative powers grow. You can imagine the drawings tacked up around that classroom if the teacher had asked, "I wonder what a leprechaun looks like? Would everyone draw me one?" Twenty-five imaginations would be up and running.



Lynne Bertrand, a contributing editor at FAMILYFUN, lives in Williamsburg, Massachusetts.