Visual art as play: Integrating the arts into the curriculum.

We read When Pigasso Met Mootisse, by Nina Laden, again this year. Each class responds with intense interest and curiosity when I read this story to them. No one is indifferent! But this year, I continued with actual stories about the artists lives. I read, Henri's Scissors, by Jeannette Winter, and Just Behave, Picasso!, by Jonah Winter, and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes. These two books were labeled ages eight and up, so I was risking inattention and much silly behavior by reading them to a group of sixteen fours!

I was surprised and happy by their response to each book. The first book is a very true story about Matisse's shift to paper cutouts as his art. The theme included his old age and death. When I got to that part of the story there was a reverent hush among the children. "He died?", was a question. "Yes", I answered. "He was very old...", was one comment. The illustrator shows Matisse cutting out the stars in heaven, and the children accepted this premise.

The Picasso book emphasizes the wide expansiveness of self-expression in art, and how Picasso changed his art as his need to express himself changed. The children were mesmerized by the idea that, even though people said Picasso should "behave", he didn't.  One boy said, "Your art is for you! Nobody else can tell you how to do your art". That was the meaning of the book for him. Others were interested in finding the representational meaning of cubist paintings.

The children have begun following their muses, now. Some are drawing with "shapes", their take on cubism. Others are cutting paper and gluing it down. Because we need a school auction project, we will see where this takes us. I have materials at the ready! My take away from this experience is that even preschool children are grabbed by "big ideas". I forget sometimes. Never underestimate their ability to absorb meaning from their reading. Nothing I did during these readings and activities were "cute". They didn't need to be.

Here are a few pictures of preliminary experimentation before the auction project begins...

"Shape drawing"

Cutting shapes for bigger work

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.