parents of preschoolers believe that art has a major place in any preschool



curriculum environment.

The question that begs to be answered, however is what type of art?

The standard fare of art that has been fed to kids for generations in many of

the traditional preschools has been the classic arts and crafts projects.

Basically following a model, or teacher created idea...and making replicas of

these projects.

How many teachers though stop long enough to ask themselves, WHY?

What benefits are my students gaining through these arts and crafts projects.

There are many teachers who have attempted to answer this question.

Allow me to quote some of those answers.

#1 "Well the kids need a way to remember their lessons and what better way do

do it than through arts and crafts"

#2" The children need a way to follow directions and this is the best way to

do it"

#3 "Well its fun for the kids"

In order to determine if these three reasons are valid we need to be

cognizant of the goings on in preschool.

What do we really feel is the role of a good preschool education in early

childhood education and how does art fit into it.

Anyone that is a serious student of early childhood education has studied

many of the original psychologists that discovered how children think and

develop. Based on these findings curriculum has been developed to meet the

needs of young children.

Jean Piaget a very well known psychologist discovered that children are very

concrete learners and learn best by actually doing and being involved with

materials themselves.

Erick Erickson another well known psychologist taught us "The eight stages

of Man". He explains how man goes through many different psychosocial stages

where they are struggling to develop identity.Children at the preschool

stages have the great need to develop their self esteem,their sense of

initiative and autonomy.

Based on their findings we have learned that children need to be given lots

of concrete experiences to actually make them think and solve problems. We

also need to make sure that our preschool curriculum is full of activities

that allow the children choices which encourages independence, allows them to

use their initiative and to feel good about themselves.

So back to art in the preschool curriculum.

If we look at all of the classic, traditional arts and crafts done in

traditional preschools, nursery and kindergarten classrooms we will see that

most of the activities are arts and crafts activities that are designed to

make out children into little robots. Copy exactly what I tell you to do in a

step by step fashion.

Open ended art however is different. Open ended art or progressive art allows

the children to think for themselves, solve problems, take initiative and to

feel good about themselves. Wouldn't you feel better about yourself if your

artwork looked different than everybody else's, instead of seeing 20

identical projects hanging side by side.

Wouldn't it be great if your little preschoolers felt that their teachers

trusted them enough to allow them to create at their own developmental level.

But what about the three concerns we expressed above...helping children

remember their lessons, direction following and fun.

Let's go over thee points one at a time:

Remembering their lessons: Art is too important of an activity in its own

right to be used to jog the children's memories. There are alot of better

ways to get children to remember things. There are too many important skills

that they children can get out of art and besides there are open ended art

activities that teacher can do with their preschoolers that can also help

them remember their lessons.

Following directions: Again art should not be wasted on following directions

when the side effects will be a stifling and controlling. There are many

other more exciting, and fulfilling ways to learn to follow directions than

wasting it on art and finally...

Fun...Who said it is fun to copy exactly what the book or the teacher said on

how to do a project . How much more fun it is to do open ended art that

allows for problem solving, self esteem and fun. Yes! real fun.