ABSTRACT
Up until the age of about 5 or 6 years most children add each item to their figures in such a way that they have a segmented appearance (see Figure 42 ). But gradually they start to combine parts of the figure with a continuous contour; Jacqueline Goodnow (1977) called this ‘threading’. In Amelia Fysh’s collection, 5 per cent of the children combined the arms and the upper torso and 2 per cent combined the lower torso and the legs. In these cases the figures appear to be wearing a jumper or trousers, although we do not know whether the children intended the figures to be clothed. Four per cent of children drew a head and then used a continuous contour for the whole of the figure giving it a gingerbread man appearance. Two per cent drew a continuous contour around the arm and hand and 5 per cent drew one around the leg and foot. In the collection as a whole only 11 per cent of the children displayed any form of threading, although some children included more than one kind. (See Figures 20, 32, 40, 41, 43, 45 and 50 .) Threading, then, is not particularly common in the nursery school. But, when I investigated threading in older children’s drawings (Cox, 1993) I found that it had increased to 26 per cent among 5- to 6-year-olds, to 81 per cent among 7- to 8-year-olds and 96 per cent among 9- to 10-year-olds (<italic>Figure 40</italic> shown complete on page 39) Parts of figures begin to be combined with a continuous contour, called threading https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315043210/ea9bf748-d043-46b9-8207-654b081e69ca/content/fig40a_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> (<italic>Figure 42</italic> shown complete on page 43) Items are added in such a way that figures have a segmented appearance https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315043210/ea9bf748-d043-46b9-8207-654b081e69ca/content/fig42a_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
