Art Outside

I have written before about outdoor music, and I present workshops on this topic. I am a musician, not a visual artist. But outdoor visual art embraces so many of the values we early childhood educators hold dear. We value creative partnerships between children and teachers. We value the outdoor environment for the health and welfare of children (and teachers!). Children need nature more than many folk realize. Just digging in the dirt enhances children's immunity,  It increases feelings of well-being as well (did someone really have to study this to find out?). Whole community organizations are advancing the idea that learning outdoors is inherently crucial to the development of healthy children.  So why not do art outside? Isn't this a no-brainer?

Painting on a sheet with spray bottles is an oldie but goodie. Liquid water color works well, and children can investigate the way color sinks into or runs down fabric, provoking questions for discussion. Pumping a spray bottle brings up scientific inquiry (how does it work?). Children will most certainly come up with other techniques and ideas. Teachers need to be flexible. If a girl asks to use a brush, then those brushes must come out! Should we say no to mixing color with mud and smearing it on the fabric? No! Everything is food for thought and fun.

Using "loose parts"  is another way to include visual art outside. Use loose parts from nature, such as stones, logs,and "tree cookies". Include manufactured items such as tires. These entice children to create. It is more productive when teachers consciously prepare children with stories, pictures, and anecdotes inside the classroom. A child's imagination needs to be fed something beyond Ninja Turtles and Princesses! Feed their imaginations with stories about  outdoor creations. The work of Andy Goldsworthy inspires all ages. Alexander Calder's early life demonstrates what children can do with found objects and scraps.

Finally, taking children to see outdoor art installations that adults have created legitimatizes this work. They need to know that what they are doing isn't just something adults have them do to fill time! Children need to see that what they are asked to do is meaningful in the adult world. Investigate your community's cultural resources. Not every town has a National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, but even Marfa, Texas has outdoor art!

I hope this post has given some teachers and parents not only ideas, but reasons for doing art outside with children. I can't think of a greater gift to give.

Parents: If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention!

On the left is an example of an "arts" activity in any classroom for young children. If you find your child is bringing home these pre-cut, adult-directed gems you should bring them back to school with this question: What the heck is this teaching my child?

The teacher might say that the class is studying bugs. She/he might say she is teaching the skill of "following directions". She might also say, "I've been doing this activity for fifty-eight years and it has always been a success. Kids love it.

Ahem.

Where do I begin?

I recently finished teaching a course called Art, Music and Movement for Young Children. My emphasis is on integrated curriculum: Teaching the arts and teaching content in a kind of beautiful soup of connectivity. There is so much to learn. Art forms, techniques, terminology, standards in both the arts and the content areas. The students need to learn the stages of children's creative development. and the stages of social play, so that they can plan appropriate activities and units for each age. I find that I fall short every semester. I know I could have done more to communicate all that needs to be learned.

The final course project is two activities that teach math, science, social studies or language arts through and with the arts fields of music, drama, movement, and visual art. Each activity needs to emphasize an arts field and a content area. It is a hard assignment. I look for the ability of the children involved to make intelligent choices. According to many of my adult students, who seldom have seen the arts as anything other than a frill, their view radically changes (or they say it does) about teaching through the arts. 

Why do I begin with the example above? A student changed this idea to "make it more creative" by giving children pre-cut circles of differing colors. They had a choice, then. The children still had to conform to a model, and couldn't try out different ideas of how to demonstrate their knowledge of bugs (ladybugs are not the only bugs on the planet--I have child students who like ants quite a bunch). Why not look at bugs in paintings? Why not give them different materials, and ask them which bug they are choosing to create? 

Why not? Aww, but look at that ladybug! It's so cute!

Don't fall for it, parents! It's a trap made of decades of busywork cuteness in preschools across the country. It is lazy teaching. Tell the teacher that you will be assessing your child's knowledge, and looking for real creative projects. Tell her/him that you value creativity and honest intellectual inquiry from now on. Take charge of your child's learning.

Integrating Curriculum: Sometimes Learning is Messy!

This is a display of our Imaginary Land Project. It grew out of several strands from previous weeks. My small group (The Star Moon Drummers!--Great name for a rock band, no?) was fascinated by bridges and bridge building. The Drummers (four girls, four boys) built bridges from cardboard, huge wooden blocks, small wooden blocks, and their own bodies. They created stories about their bridges, and associated their understandings with actual bridges they knew or had heard about. One boy was so entranced that he became the expert on suspension bridges, and, with his scientist father, built them in his own basement, sharing pictures with the other children.

Out of a curricular strand on maps that we shared with the other Pre-K small group (The Runaway Missing Names--it's a long story...) came an interest in the ubiquitous world maps we teachers brought in from Doctors Without Borders (bless 'em). I cut the maps I had into quarters and gave each child a piece. I asked them to outline the countries, and as we did, we discussed them, and the children's knowledge of them ("John is from Australia! Senka is from India! Remember Irini from Greece?"). They knew that, on a map, white equaled ice and snow, and blue indicated water, so their interest was piqued by the colors of the continents and countries they outlined. Next, they glued their maps to larger paper and created art by coloring areas with Creamy Crayons. As they colored I asked them to imagine their own country, or "land". I recorded their ideas on my trusty phone, and later typed them up for display. The children sounded out the names of their lands and wrote them on their maps. But that wasn't the end.

Children are most comfortable realizing their vision in three dimensions. This is why so many learning materials in preschool are blocks, math manipulatives, and clay. Just emerging from the sensory-motor stage of development, and not yet at ease with two-D representation, children think, and represent in 3-D. Using bodies in movement is another 3-D, kinesthetic route for cognitive growth. Yes, movement is a form of thought. Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences has been around for years, yet schools still seem to push 2-D thinking as the gold standard. 

How could we represent our imaginary lands in three dimensions? With ice, dirt, greenery, and desert? First the children painted huge cardboard, scavenged from old boxes, in blues and greens. This was the water their lands would inhabit. Then they made their own clay from a recipe in Mudworks, a book I have used for centuries (well..a long time, anyway). They enjoyed the clay-making, because children love messes, and this is a messy activity! They created paper outlines of the land they wanted to create, and chose either one continent or several islands to portray. They laid out the outlines on their clay and cut around them with plastic knives. The land masses were glued to their cardboard oceans with Tacky Glue. 

Next was painting the land according to their own ideas of where in the world their land was. Was it near the equator, or perhaps in temperate zones? Was it near one of the poles? We used a globe to imagine this. Being fours and fives, though, they wanted some of each, so many of their land masses were a combination of brown, green, and white. Their ideas of their lands altered as they created their three-dimensional displays. Ice came into their stories that had none before.

We caucused about what they wanted to build, and with what. My suspension bridge boy had heard of building with sugar cubes and there was no doubt after that what the building medium would be! The children built bridges across water, and buildings on land with sugar cubes, tiny sticks and Tacky Glue. The last step was painting buildings and bridges. Voila! They were done. I asked if they wanted to make sugar people, and to my disappointment, they did not. C'est la vie. The project was theirs, not mine!

Within a group of eight children ages 4 1/2 through 5 1/4 there are many differing talents and abilities. One child might build like an engineer and another tell a fabulous story. Each child needs a different level of support throughout the process. This whole project took several weeks, and at various stages I had another well-trained adult working with us. Children cried at times with frustration because their ability didn't match their vision. We worked with them to come as close as possible. The children were proud of their work, and eager to take their creations home. I took pictures for my 2-D wall display. 

It is indicative of emergent, project-based teaching that boundaries between what is art, language arts, social studies, science, math and other subjects get blurry. That's why parents and some teachers may see an integrated curriculum as just too messy for "real" school. But every child gets individual attention and validation for their thinking and efforts.

Here is one imaginary land story for you to enjoy: "Once upon a time there was a Color Man. He makes crayons and colors. He gives them out to people. He goes on the line (map boundary) to take colors to everyone. He goes to different countries to give colors out."

This is a land I would love to visit. Wouldn't you?

Peinture en Plein Air

Ou, la la! The story of Pigasso and Mootisse continued today!

We have been experimenting with colors indoors, mixing black and while, black, white and green, and the usual primary colors into secondary colors on paper with tempera. The children delight in "discovering" combinations. Some already know that blue and yellow make green. They've read Little Blue and Little Yellow for some time. Fewer know The Color Kittens, but are veterans of science experiments where other combinations have been tried. I asked my small group what they would like to do that the characters in When Pigasso met Mootisse did and one little boy suggested painting the fence!

Instead, we painted a big piece of cardboard.

I brought out a variety of bright colors, along with white and black. The children took turns being painters and art critics. The art critics were to tell the painters what they liked about what they were doing and what colors they saw evolving. This was slightly challenging since there were other children playing on the playground while they were critiquing their friends' art! Considering the distraction, they did well. 

Next we added leaves. This girl decided that, rather than stick leaves to the paint, she would make sure the leaves stuck by painting them individually. This worked well. 

The task took longer than I imagined it would, and so we stowed the painting in the shed to continue with tomorrow. We will see what transpires! 

When Pigasso Met Mootisse

This story has many admirers among art teachers. There should be more admirers among early childhood educators. It has everything! War! Grudges! Messes! Hurt feelings and most importantly: Making up. The story is based loosely upon the friendship of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, with animals subbing for the historical humans. 

The children are enthralled with super-heros and fighting, as so many children are. When I started reading When Pigasso Met Mootisse to my kids two years ago I was not convinced it would hold their attention. What I discovered was that the concept of an "art attack" hit the sweet spot in their fight-loving brains. Subsequently I also discovered that fighting for fighting's sake wasn't what they were really interested in. They were in love with the brio of the battle between opposites.  In super-hero stories, it was the battle between good guys and bad guys. In this story it is the battle between two different styles of self-expression. Feelings run very high in either case, but the idea is the same. 

So we are thinking about doing a "unit", as we say in the biz. 

The children mostly favored Picasso's style of art, which is cubism in the story. All of the blogs I've looked at show children's versions of Picasso portraits. They are way cool, folks. I applaud the teachers who give explicit directions, teach art style, and still get creative, individual results. I'm of two minds about this. I love the result. The children get away from houses, butterflies, ninjas, etc. for a while, as my friend, Angelique, says in her blog. They produce something original, with a set of learned skills and techniques. There is so much value in this. The children, as another art teacher friend has said, need to be taken seriously. On the other hand, in our program, which values process over product, we usually give materials, scaffolding, and time. We ask them for their ideas. We even wait for them. Can we resolve these two approaches? 

Should we ask them to produce their own Picassos? Or should we expose them to Picasso and give them the materials and time to see where their inspiration leads? 

What do you think?

Finishing a Project and Reflecting on Arts-based learning.

Our Pre-K children performed their version of Mozart's  Magic Flute yesterday morning. Mozart wouldn't have recognized much of it, nor would have the librettist, Emanuel Schikaneder. But I expect they would have enjoyed the enthusiasm, and comic proclivities of the children performing their Singspiel. Mozart and Schikaneder created this work, Mozart's only one in their native German, as a folk opera, one that would appeal to the average Austrian. The music, however, is anything but average. Thus it mesmerized many of children from the moment they heard it. Young children are born to love music of all genres and types. They are genetically predisposed to it., as Oliver Sacks says in his book Musicophilia. 

Doing an opera (however truncated and strangely nonsensical ours was) can be challenging in preschool. Since ours is a childcare program as well as preschool, our "events" aren't always planned in conjunction with parents'. Our Papageno (the boy who said he was interested in this rich, comic part) left for Lebanon with his parents along with his twin brother the Dragon. Our stately Queen of the Night found out she was going camping on a Thursday when our performance was Friday. So our Sarastro was promoted to Papageno, (I cut Sarastro. My husband, being a baritone with bass tendencies, was horrified.) My teaching partner, Sue, who had been in Florida the whole week of rehearsals, stepped in as the Queen of the Night, and I gleefully subbed in as the Dragon. One of the three ladies left for Iran to visit relatives before we performed. The two left declared themselves the "Two Ladies", which solved that casting problem. Children solve our difficulties more easily than we do, and with much less angst. 

But, oh, the hilarity and joy of it: Monostatos and his henchman going from a state of fierce depravity (chasing Pamina around the stage) to one of delighted dancing at the sound of Papageno's bells (toilet paper tubes taped together and strung with jingle bells). Tamino trying to kill the dragon (me) with his cardboard sword and then feigning a faint so that the Two Ladies could bend over him and say how handsome he was (a sturdy girl played the Prince--she jumped at the chance). Papageno dancing a Snoopy dance facing the parents and younger children like a trooper while I played his introductory music. Yes, we used music liberally. My only regret is that I am not more technically savvy so that I could line up a series of music files of just the right portions. A young staffer told me, too late, that it could be done. "Oh, Brave New World..."!

All of the props, from the magic flute itself, Papageno's pan pipes and magic bells, to the lock for Papageno's mouth, were made by the children during activity time over the course of two weeks. The sets were made by the children with design help from my partner, Sue. I "directed" and stage-managed but gave the cast as much freedom as I could to interpret their roles. The "Two Ladies" took it upon themselves to let me know when I had forgotten anything. The children too shy to talk onstage were happy to become the animals enchanted by Tamino's flute.

With the interest in the arts in early childhood growing, it is dispiriting to hear from my adult students about how impoverished many of our programs still are in this regard. How better to promote literacy, fine motor skills, long-term memory, and body/brain integration than to give them a story with music that they themselves are willing to do? How better to nurture design (cognitive/spatial abilities) than to ask them to come up with a prop created with cardboard, paper, straws, tape and buttons? Teacher scaffolding replaces teacher creating, teacher dictating. Children gain confidence in their own abilities. Along the way they hone all of their skills. How freeing this approach is! 

Yes, it is work. It is absolutely so much easier for teachers to follow set lesson plans year after year, using the usual themes and activities. Children will respond to these. They are generous souls. They don't know that there is a better way. 

Using the arts (and I mean art, not craft) as a road to learning motivates children to do their best and be proud of the results. And it doesn't require magic.

A little Reggio, a little Vygotsky: A snapshot of how to provide arts experiences for young children.

We discussed in "staff meeting", which is our version of the Reggio Emilia approach to teacher collaboration, how we wanted a new set of materials for our art shelf. This shelf is an array of materials children can use on their own to create art. We had sequins, buttons, pipe cleaners and paper out and decided we needed to go natural for a while. There was a lively discussion about how, using natural materials could end up being colorless, or at least multiple shades of brown. So it was decided that some paint would make it into the mix.

We brought a tray of paints and fat brushes outside. Children gathered thin sticks and brought them to the picnic table for painting. "That one's mine", one girl told me later. "I'm going to use it in my art". Luckily there were several deep blue sticks so that she ultimately could claim whichever one looked like "hers".

On the lowest shelf of the art center inside we placed small squares of corrugated cardboard. Above that are bowls with seeds saved from years past that never made it into the ground. Tiny shells and stones, some of which I brought from the Jersey Shore invite children to touch and examine them. I added non-toxic "Tacky glue" so that the heavier items would adhere. Children worked with intense concentration on constructing their art with some help from teachers. Here are several samples.

I am looking forward to seeing what the children do with these materials, and what else they decide to bring to the mix. Building upward isn't something they think of instinctively and my teaching partner, Sue, taught some of them to "go up". By the end of the month I know we'll have a collection of masterpieces. 

Art in preschool is always process art. I have written about the importance, though, of demonstrating  new ways to use materials so that they learn by example. Vygotsky wasn't against this approach. On the contrary, he said that children learn through social interaction. How they express themselves depends on the quality of the environment, and that includes the quality of interactions with more experienced children and adults. Adults can give children permission to explore and delve more deeply. Sometimes they need just that little push to go further than they thought they could. 

I don't recommend coercion or taking over, but the reason we as early childhood educators say, "Great job!" all the time is because we want children to feel good about their work, and fear discouraging them. But we have neglected the needs of children to be taken seriously. We give them encouragement to pursue their ideas at our center, and offer new and different ways of looking at things. Children will benefit to the degree with which they are developmentally ready. That's all we have the right to hope for!