You say Pigasso, I say Picasso...

I love four year olds! They are in a transition stage of development, at the cusp of separating reality from fantasy. You can see the wheels turning in some of their amazing brains, shifting gears from, "Is this real?" to "Of course it's not real". I can see it when I bring out my puppet, Melvin the Monkey (named after my beloved first voice teacher, Mel Hakola). "He's not talking, YOU are!", they say, at the same time speaking with Melvin directly. "Melvin, do you want a banana?" 

We read When Pigasso Met Mootisse, and I carefully explained that there were real artists named Picasso and Matisse, showing them pictures of the artists and their art. But throughout the subsequent activities related to the story, each time I said the artists' names, they corrected me. One little boy, a concerned look on his face, said, "Gail, you mean Pigasso, right?". I admit I caved. That "G" started creeping into my pronunciation. 

Here is how we did our Pigasso, er, Picasso art project, and the objectives you as an early childhood educator can reference if you do it with children. 

We gathered at morning meeting and listed our choices for activity time, as usual. On the art table Sue had prepared a long mirror down one side of the table so that the children could draw a LARGE circle, eyes, nose and mouth, looking at themselves while they drew, sitting three at a time.. Children, speaking their thoughts aloud, said, "My face is a circle", or "Mine's an oval". Some, remembering the cubism we discussed prior to the activity, said, "I'll make my eyes triangles like a pumpkin". 

The next step was to cut their picture into five largish pieces (these instructions were to prevent the inevitable cutting into shards and iddy-biddy pieces that often happens when we say, "cut"). Sue had demonstrated in morning meeting that pieces of a drawing could be reformed into a "new face", just as Picasso, I mean Pigasso had done. 

We saved the pieces for each child by putting them together with a paper clip with their name attached. The next day they pieced their "new faces" together on a sheet of construction paper of their choosing. After gluing them down, they used my favorite colors, Creamy Crayons, to give vibrant colors to the new faces. As these are children of varying age within the "fours" bracket, not to mention varying individual interests and passions, the result was a broad range of "new faces" to put up in our stair well.

On the subject of directions, which I raised in my last post, we only provided those I have already mentioned except for encouraging children to color pieces so that the idea of a face be preserved. They were left to interpret that direction as they wished. Our direct instruction was not to tight, not to loose. Hopefully, it was just right!

Virginia Visual Arts Foundation Block 1: Visual Communication and Production, all four objectives.

Virginia Visual Arts Foundation Block 2: Art History and Cultural Context, objectives b and c.

Learning to learn

A month and a half later, we are sitting in morning meeting, and I show our group a flyer from the Washington Opera's coming 2013-2014 season. On the front there is a color picture of the three ladies from Magic Flute confronting the (two-headed!) dragon over the fainted body of Tamino. I show this flyer to our children and they exclaim in joy--"Magic Flute! Look at that dragon!". A visiting former student asks, "Is he dead?". A student patiently  explains, "He's the prince Tamino". Another: "He fainted when the dragon came." They begin reminiscing about the performance, and who was whom, leaving the visitor baffled. She had never heard of this story that our four/five year old children know so intimately and recount with such enjoyment. And she is almost seven! 

I have written about the benefits of the project approach, and about how music connects with language in the brain to form richer concepts, and improve long term memory. But what about what I consider to be the dirty little secret in early childhood education? Many practitioners do not know how to or want to share the realms of art with young children because they themselves do not feel comfortable with them (the realms, that is). My adult students are usually enthusiastic about learning new ways to provide arts experiences, but many teachers have difficulty envisioning going beyond the traditional format of providing pre-cut pieces of paper or even coloring sheets to cut out and form scenes or stick puppets, or other "art". Thinking outside the box is possible but going there? Maybe not. Using classical music is considered great for "calming" children but giving them the experience of music and drama? Maybe not. If teachers think that learning about new children's authors is exciting and fun, they do not always think so about learning to appreciate opera and ballet. Yet young children are so drawn to these forms of art when the teacher is also open and enthusiastic about them.

What is needed is training that demonstrates to teachers that they can learn about anything new (as they expect their students to). Just as they learn about sea life to teach about it, they can learn about Mozart (start with Mozart's Magic Fantasy). They can explore Wikipedia and YouTube. They can talk to friends who are familiar with these theater arts and ask questions. Just as children ask questions to learn, so can we, the "big kids" who teach them. The teacher's brain must continue to make connections in order to be fresh and open to everything children can learn. And they must not underestimate their own ability to learn, anymore than they do their students'.

The Snowy Day: Teaching Art, Teaching Tolerance

 

I am breathless with excitement! The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats, is fifty years old, and a commemorative edition is out. I’ve already ordered it after reading about it in the Washington Post Style section today.

I was ten when book came out and felt that I was way too mature to look at a mere picture book, but I did happily read it to my daughters when they were little. Since we were living in the D.C. area and only visited my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio a few times in winter, the magic of snow in the city was mostly unfamiliar to them. Those few times that we did visit home, they made snow angels to their hearts’ content, as did the story’s protagonist Peter in The Snowy Day. We never talked about Peter as black. He was a little boy, just like some of the little boys they knew in school.

When I began teaching young children, Keat’s stories became a regular part of my curriculum. We went outside in the snow (with boots on!) to make snow angels and throw snowballs at trees (not at people!). The children enjoyed making tracks in the snow with sticks, as Peter did. They experimented with footprints, and we looked for animal tracks. I even photographed snow-tracks of different animals for guessing games. After reading Peter’s Chair, the children voted on a design of a chair we would sand and paint for the school’s auction. One little boy asked his mother to bring his baby sister to school for show-and-tell. Peter had a baby sister, so he wanted to share his!

Once I began teaching Language Arts for Young Children at Northern Virginia Community College I required my students to do an author report, sharing curriculum ideas, biographical, and bibliographical information. Much to my surprise, and a testament to the truism that teachers learn by teaching, I discovered that “Jack” was not black. He was a Jew of Eastern European descent, and that he changed his name to Keats from Katz because of the anti-Semitism he experienced in New York. My own mother experienced such anti-Semitism in urban Cleveland during those same years. A simple story about a little boy became intensely personal for me.

Keats expressed his love for his tumbledown urban, integrated (“diverse”) neighborhood through his art.  Keats’ love of art, of his life in a city of graft and graffiti, inspired his storytelling even as both he and his subjects suffered from prejudice and bigotry.

Teachers can take Keats’ work as a springboard for many activities that inspire interest in science, art, literature and math. They do this all the time. African-American teachers can and do use The Snowy Day for Black History month, since Peter was the first black child featured in an American picture book. What else can we do?

A large part of teaching young children includes emotional literacy: Knowing and understanding your own feelings in order to understand other people. Can we talk about how Keats felt a kinship with his black protagonist because of his own experience in a less than tolerant country? Can we talk about feeling left out or disliked with young children by asking them to journal about their own experiences? Can we talk about understanding others? Even as my mother and her family suppressed her roots to get by in twentieth century urban American, (the family name, Mansfeld, was changed to Mansfield), Keats changed his name to hide his own roots. We don’t want children to feel they have to do the same thing with any aspect of their identities. We want them to become fearless in art and fearless in communication, bridging divides while expressing themselves authentically, just as he did. How do you do this in your teaching practice? Share your thoughts.