-children making sense of the world through art-

- The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.

These paint sticks spread like butter on the paper making it easy for little ones to mix and layer colors, create overlapping shapes, lines, and designs, and express their ideas. 

“In early learning, narrative matters. From birth onwards young children make extensive use of imaginary play and storytelling in order to understand and make sense of their world.” - from the book Storytelling in Early Childhood: Enriching language, literacy and classroom culture

Paint provides an intimate sensory experience for people of all ages. Tommy, a child with special needs, finger paints at the easel. As he moves his hands through the wet viscous liquid, watches the way it travels and the marks his fingers make as they trail through, hears the squish and the squelch between his fingers, and smells that painty smell, his understanding and connection to the world are developing.

While she was drawing she explained it as: “Wiggly wiggly worms and using every color like a rainbow.” 

2nd Picture: “The forest is blue and the pond is brown.” 

Albert Bandura is a psychologist known for his social learning theory and for his theoretical construct of self-efficacy. According to Bandura self-efficacy develops in 4 main ways: social modeling, social persuasion, mastery experiences, and psychological responses. In this picture we can see observational learning and social modeling taking place by the way Riley copied Samantha as she was drawing to make her own enclosure and tell her own narrative. After she succeeded in her drawing she proudly went around the room showing it off to friends and teachers. 

Olivia, Zoe, Allie, and Nora are all 4 1/2 - 5 years old. In professor Linda Louis’ Multi-dimensional Model of Artistic Development they are expressing Phase 2 Visual Concepts. The use of early baselines show that 2-D surface and 3-D space are related and the placement of flowers shows that they recognize the page is divisible. Although they have all created flowers you can see their own unique voice in each drawing. 

This drawing by Zoe shows her dressed up as the character Elsa from the disney movie Frozen. The debate of Nature vs Nurture in child development argues about the different ways behavior is developed in humans. Zoe’s drawing represents psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s theory that knowledge is co-constructed. He believed that children’s development is dependent upon their social and cultural interactions.

I asked Samantha if she wanted to tell me about her picture and after a few moments she said, “No...not yet.” She was concentrating and listening to the way the material spread by creating large blocks of shapes and capturing them inside of a green enclosure. She is fascinated by the visual consequences made by her physical actions. 

Learn more about guided inquiry in early childhood here: http://inservice.ascd.org/guided-inquiry-in-early-childhood-teaching-and-learning/

This paper: http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1129&context=art_design_theses  explores the ways the arts promote create self-efficacy and shape students’ self-concept. 

Artist, teacher, and educational theorist Elliot Eisner wrote about the many habits of mind that the arts teach, such as celebrating the ways we see and interpret the world, the ability to think imaginatively and express the imagination through the properties of materials, and the ways it teaches us new languages to communicate ideas. These complex thinking strategies can be seen in Samantha’s exploration of paint. Her exploration leads to discoveries as she constructs her own knowledge.

In early childhood making art is a very social activity.  In the picture above the very shy and skeptical Luke was encouraged by his classmate Riley to paint at the easel with her and in the picture below Benjamin, who has sensory processing issues was brought over to the easel by Callum to engage in communication through the spreading of paint and pounding of brushes. Through the arts children develop social and emotional skills that are crucial to their early formation of “self-concept.” 

The tadpole person is widely seen as a phenomenon of symbolic development early childhood. Most see this as the child’s first attempt at a realistic drawing. Some believe that the tadpole person represents children’s incomplete ideas on the human body while others focus on how these early drawings differ because of cultural influences. More can be learned from- Cultural perspectives on children’s tadpole drawings: at the interface between representation and production:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4469825/

Sydney quietly paints on the easel, experiments with mark-making using two brushes at once, and begins to design the space and her shapes.  While painting she points to the middle and whispers, “Mikey.” referring to her older brother. 

The students in this class are studying a farm and animal theme for spring time. 4 year old Ben was looking at a book on farm animals when he decided to draw a farm of his own. The page becomes a target for action as he deliberately draws what is most important to the subject. According to Viktor Lowenfeld Ben is in the second stage of development called “The PreSchematic Stage”. He is beginning to visualize in pictures, but still has little understanding of space on a 2-D surface