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Mondrian and Picasso: Why Art is Important for Children

5/16/2015

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Art helps children develop many important skills such as creativity, communication, problem solving, fine motor, and social/emotional skills. 
In these Mondrian projects, the children had to problem solve by figuring out "What rectangle can I fit here?" Some children answered the question "How can I make more colors?"
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The children express themselves in very different ways. By using these stampers, they are developing fine motor skills and building hand strength. 
During Art, the children are learning to share the materials. They can can show their individual uniqueness through their own art, and this helps develop a positive self concept. Each child is learning that she has control over what she puts on her paper. 

When a child shows us her art, we say things like
"Look at how much yellow you used!"

"You used a different technique with your stampers and look at how the blue, red and yellow exploded together!"
"I can tell that you were very careful to keep your red, yellow, and blue separate from each other on your paper."
When we say things like "It's beautiful! I love it!" and "Great job!" we're not actually letting the child know that we see what she created.
Children are learning to express themselves through art. Sometimes it is the creation that is the expression, and sometimes it is the process of creating through which the child is expressing herself.  
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In these Picasso drawings, children are following directions and building their vocabulary by using positional words. 
Elementary Art has tremendous value on many different levels for children. We need to keep this in mind as some public schools are eliminating art programs from their curriculum. 
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Teaching Creativity for Educators and Parents

2/16/2014

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A short psychology lesson for early childhood educators and parents:
One of the arguments AGAINST positive reinforcement is that it can only be used to improve rote learning (memorization), not creativity. This is simply not true.

Positive reinforcement is GREAT for teaching creativity; you just have to learn to reinforce the creative!

Example: In the first photo, the child used the unifix cubes in a way I’ve never seen them used. Unifix cubes only attach together ONE way, but Alex figured out a way to build a three-dimensional elevator with them! This may not seem like rocket science, and it’s not. But it IS CREATIVE. Alex chose to use these blocks in a way that he’d never seen anyone else use them!

Okay, so… He did something creative, how do we reinforce that? We’re going to use our words, and we’re going to point out IN PARTICULAR what we like about what he did.

Alex, that’s really creative!
What a great idea you came up with!
I’ve never seen anyone else build like that with the unifix cubes; that’s really neat how you did that!
That’s a really DIFFERENT way to build with those cubes, neato!

Photo 2 is probably the kids’ favorite way to build with the unifix cubes - as LOOONG as possible (also very cool, and deserving of positive reinforcement)!


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    Author

    Wendy Joy Yohman
    Eleven years teaching experience
     at a small private  school. 
    Current preschool supervisor.
     Bachelor's Degree in 
    Psychology with an emphasis
     on educational kinesiology 
    (how different movements 
    activate certain areas of the 
    brain). 

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