Why I teach art through stories
A child who is told to draw a house draws a house. A child given a story draws something you could not have predicted. That difference is the whole job.
Ask ten children to draw a house and you will get ten houses, and they will be good houses. Then ask them to draw the house you lived in when you were seven, and the drawings change completely — the doors get strange, the windows get too big, the colours get louder.
The first exercise trains hands. The second trains memory, and memory is where drawing actually begins.
This is why every class here starts with a story rather than a shape. A shape is a tool. A story is a reason to reach for the tool, and once a child has a reason, they will practise the tool on their own, at home, for years.
The test I use: if a child can tell me what the drawing is about, it is finished. If they cannot, they keep going, and I help them find the sentence.