Early Childhood News posted a great article HERE by Carolyn Tomlin. I would urge you to explore their site with more depth if you find it interesting. (Thank you S.G. for sharing)

Creative Art Activities Promote Development

Five-year-old Jason, decided to draw and color a picture of flowers for his mother. Working at the kitchen table, he continued until he felt his picture was the best possible. When finished, he walked over to his mom with a big smile on his face and said, "Shut your eyes and hold out your hands. I made something beautiful for you!"

When his mother looked at the drawing, she asked, "Well…what is it?"

"They are flowers," replied Jason. Buttercups. Your favorite kind."

"Now Jason, I would never recognize this picture as buttercups. And you certainly know buttercups aren't red. Why don't you draw me another picture that really looks like buttercups? And this time, color them yellow--like they are suppose to be!"

Is it any wonder that Jason didn't want to draw or use crayons again? And he hated the color red.

According to W.Lambert Brittain, author of Creativity, Art, and the Young Child, "The child's personality often shines through loud and clear when he or she draws or paints, for example, the little red-headed boy who drew red-haired boys in stripped T-shirts. No one doubted whom the drawings represented. Drawings by young children are typically egocentric." Brittain says that "Art activities not only reflect a child's inner self: they help form it."

The final form, the finished picture, the beautiful painting is not the goal of art for young children (Schwartz and Douglas, 1967). The goals of art for preschoolers is to:

1.       Express their thinking, knowledge and ideas;
2.       Explore, try out, and create with new and different kinds of media;
3.       Experiment with colors, lines, forms, shapes, textures, and designs;
4.       Express feelings and emotions;
5.       Be creative.

Parents and teachers have many opportunities to help children develop mentally, socially and emotionally. Art promotes creativity, builds self-confidence, teaches task analysis and participate in group work as well as individuals. It is important for art teachers to design lessons lessons that recognize their actual abilities. Trying a lesson in linear perspective with a kinder-class is doomed for failure. More on that HERE and at the end of this blog post.

Art Promotes Creativity

One of the goals for art education, whether in the home or school, is to make children more creative regardless of where their creativity will be used. Parents know that even siblings are highly individual. No two youngsters express themselves the same way. Creativity brings out the child's personality. Viktor Lowenfeld, in Creative and Mental Growth, says, "To suppress these individual differences, to emphasize the final product, to reward one youngster over another, goes against the basic premises of creative expression."

When parents view their child's artwork, they realize the creative process involved is of great value to the developing child. In other words, the process is more important than the product.

Parents may encourage their children to experiment with art products in the following ways:

·         Avoid coloring-book-type line drawings or workbooks.
·         Have faith in your child's art work and tell them so.
·         Refrain from doing the work yourself, or offering too much help.
·         Accept a child's creative products without placing a value judgment on the item.
·         Make positive comments as to how the child solves a problem in relating to his work.
·         State the confidence you have in the child to make the product unique.

Art Builds Self-Confidence

Parents who encourage the creative skills of pretending, imaginative thinking, fantasizing and inventiveness help their child deal with the world in which they live. And these skills will help in problem solving, getting along with others and understanding their world. When used in art and other areas, these skills build self-confidence--essential for now and for the future.

Answer the statements by "Always,"  "Seldom" or "Never."

·         My child feels good about her art projects.
·         To "play" with art materials is one of my child's favorite activities.
·         My child thinks of different ways to use art materials.
·         Our family has a special place to display our child's work.
·         We encourage our child to share their art with the family & friends.
·         We experiment with a wide variety of art mediums.

Art Teaches Task Analysis

What happens when adults are faced with an unfamiliar project--one that has several difficult parts and no prior experience? We either break it down into smaller, manageable sections--or give up. Children who do not understand this process often quit. Art is an area that teaches a task analysis. Learning how one begins a project, then continues to the end must be taught. Parents must realize this process as a learning experience and an important part of child development.

Guide a child to understand how a larger part can be broken down into smaller parts by asking:

1.       What should we do first?
2.       What comes next?
3.       What is the last thing we will do to complete this project?
4.       Can you think of a simpler way to perform this task?

Art Promotes Group and Individual Projects

One of the developmental task for young children is to help them grow from egocentric individuals into youngsters who can work and play cooperatively. Art projects allow an opportunity to work with others. In 1932 M.L. Parten identified a classifying system of play that continues to be used today. When children see "art" as "play" they move in the same parallel direction. For example, look at how using clay shows the stages of play. In adjacent play or social coactionpreschoolers may play or work near others but seldom come in contact. Children may sit near others, yet work on their own project. In associative play, they may borrow or lend clay to a child nearby. Then, there is the higher form of play known as cooperative play. In this form children really share ideas and work together on a project. Perhaps they make a collage from clay, use all the pieces to make a road, or create a design with everyone involved.

For some projects, individual art is best. Creativity cannot be commanded. It needs time. The creative act for most children includes four stages; (1) preparation or the necessary background experiences and skills; (2) incubation or when a person is thinking or going over it in their mind; (3) illumination or the moment of insight; (4) verification where the hunch is tested and refined (Leona E. Tyler, 1983).

Stages of Art Development

By understanding the developmental stages children progress through when drawing, you will be able to allow your child to express themselves spontaneously (Kellogg, 1969).

·         Ages 2 -3--scribbling. All children, regardless of their culture, make the same markings, in the same way at approximately the same age.
·         Ages 2-4--scribbles take shape and look like circles, ovals, squares, triangles and crosses.
·         Ages 3-5--children begin to make designs from the shapes they have been drawing.
·         Ages 4-5--designs take on the form of people
·         Age 5-6--children are at the pictorial stage

When parents understand the various stages all children go through, they will know it’s the child's first step in the developmental process of learning to draw. 


Expanded samples of Victor Lowenfeld's Stages of Artistic Development can be found HERE and HERE. A Single page PDF HERE, and another from Making Artwork HERE. A wonderful dowload on the stages of artistic ability can be found HERE.

"STEAM" is the new buzz-acronym that means science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics. Some schools advocate "STEM," erroneously thinking that art is somehow not part of the larger equation. STEAM recognizes that art can be the glue of a good integrated program. Some art educators hear the term STEAM and groan or bemoan new initiatives, new lessons, new curriculum, new methods, when instead they should be cheering!

The unavoidable fact about it is that art teachers have been using "S.T.E.A.M." long before it was ever a term or recognized for its strength. You can't make a grid, tessellation, or clay form without touching on geometry. You can't explore Warhol or Da Vinci without talking about history. You can't illustrate a story without literature. You can't mix colors without experiencing  chemistry and physics on some level because we already do it to one degree or another. It's why kids who have art outscore their peers on standardized tests. You don't need new lessons, the core connections are already there to be teased out. You may have done them for so long that you aren't even aware of it, but you do it every day!

I would liken STEAM, in most art classrooms, to a manual shift car. You can get from point "A" to point "B" in first gear and beat anyone who walks or runs to your destination. Art does this naturally. We beat out all our colleagues with deeper, multi-sensory learning with a high degree of creative problem solving. But there are higher gears available that take a bit of coordination to use. You don't always have to use them, it's fun to cruise slowly with the windows open, but using higher gears (More integration) can be fun and offer new experiences.

To get into second or third gear you could take the time to bring out a prism when you talk about color and light. You could draw from observation using science lab microscopes. You could do more pre and post writing, or reflect for a few minutes on a famous quote about art once a month, or once a week. You could tell a story about what was happening in history at the same time your artist of focus was working. By adding a bit more open ended writing or even a research paper annually, students can experience extensive cross curricular content in your "Porsche." I do these things, and encourage my peers to do so as well. The results have been pretty amazing and have saved my department. They take but a few minutes during my introductions or closures and can be done at every level.

I do two or three major integrated projects a year like exploring pollen and seed forms as the basis of sculptural projects, requiring a written research paper about an artist from history and the work they produce that has inspired that student, a unit on perspective where we use rulers, t-squares and tie it all together with surrealism. I require that every student can recognize and categorize artwork by visual clues from the renaissance to pop art, but make it a detective-like game. Did you nod and think, "I already do that!"? Well then you are already a STEAM expert!

Art students outscore their peers by an average of 100 points on the SAT. My students average about 150 points higher than their non-art peers and I attribute this to my approach. It means my department is not cut while others are. It means my budget is stable and healthy. It means I am respected by my fellow teachers.

The idea that STEAM is for some art teachers and not others, or that it becomes a point of any kind of debate, is, in my opinion, silly. We are already STEAM based teachers the moment children enter our room. The larger fact is that STEAM illustrates the absolute necessity of art in a successful school program. It needs to be embraced, or even better, shrugged off with...

"Steam? Yeah, I've been doing it for years. Nothing new."