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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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Preschool Language Art Standards: Fine Motor Skills

8/30/2014

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In order for a child to become a fluent reader and writer, he must become competent at the skills in each of our Language Arts Standards. There are five main groups of Language Arts Standards: Fine Motor Skills, Auditory Skills, Visual Skills, Thinking/Conceptual, and Language.

This blog entry will cover the Academic Standards that fall under the Fine Motor Skills category.
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Eye-Hand Coordination
Tracing - Tracing should always be done left-to-right, top-to-bottom. Left-to-right progression (the way that we write) is a habit that must be formed, and it should be formed correctly from the beginning.
Pasting 
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Cutting
Hand Strength and Coordination - Zippers, buttons, locks and keys, peg boards, play dough.
Tactile Differentiation
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Lacing
Pencil Skills - Writing name, coloring and drawing.
Fine Motor Skills are just one small part of preschool language arts. We have broken Fine Motor Skills into eight standards:


Eye-Hand Coordination
Tracing
Pasting

Cutting
Hand Strength and Coordination
Tactile Differentiation

Lacing
Pencil Skills



In our classroom, each lesson, game or classroom material has been intentionally planned and placed in the room to fulfill our Academic Content Standards. 
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Art: Self Portraits

4/12/2014

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Teaching young children to draw is important not only because we are building fine motor/writing skills, but also because young children think, learn, and "read" with pictures before they can do the same skills with symbols. For example, when we play a rhyming game with preschool children, we will match cards with the pictures pig and wig. We do not use cards with just the symbols p, i, and g. 
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By learning to draw, these children are developing another way to express themselves. 
As an introduction to the lesson, the children looked into the mirrors and answered some questions. 
"What do you see?"
"How many eyes do you have?"
"What is above your eyes?"
"Is your nose wider than your mouth?"

"Is your neck really skinny or about as wide as your head?"
"What happens when you move your shoulders?"
"What parts of your body can you bend?"
"Touch your hands to the side of your body. Where do they touch?"
We wanted to give the children some sense of proportion before they began. 
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As they finished their drawing, they were encouraged to add lots of details.
"What are you wearing?"
"Does your outfit have any zippers or pockets?"
These kids did a fantastic job! As you can see, we have necklaces, hairbows, boots, freckles and fingernails on some of our drawings.
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Art: Flowers

3/19/2014

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The only "rule" for this art project was that the children draw at least two different types of flowers.
Notice each child's pencil grip! I am a stickler for holding a writing utensil properly, even for the very young. It is better to form good habits now than try to break bad habits later! Children need to learn and practice the proper grip for any fine motor activity.
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There are five stages to children's drawing/writing - random scribbles, controlled scribbles, lines and patterns, pictures of objects and people, and letter and word practice. 
All of our drawings were very different and that was one of the main goals of this project. 
One of the best ways to talk to kids about their art is to tell them what you see. 
"I see green and yellow and a LOT of red in your picture."
"I can see you are painting the center of your flower pink."
"I see a very TALL flower and some short flowers in your picture."
It is more important for a child to know that we see his picture than to hear that we like his picture. 
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Working on the Short "A" Sound

2/22/2014

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Our preschoolers working on the short ‘a’ sound. These children are cutting out "aaaa" pictures and gluing them to a lowercase "a". We try to add a fine motor component, like cutting, to our activities every day.
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We use the lowercase letter ‘a’ because the lowercase letters are more frequently used and therefore more important for children to be able to recognize and write.
I always refer to it as ‘the aaaaa letter’ (drawing out the short ‘a’ sound, as in ‘alligator’) to prevent confusion.
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Art - La La Loopsie!

2/20/2014

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First, we practiced making loops on butcher paper.
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Next we chose whether our paper should be TALL or WIDE (vocabulary building!) and then began drawing loops with our pencils. We traced our loops with Sharpies.
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We erased our pencil lines.
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We used crayons to add some color to our loopies. I contemplated using “mixed media” for this project, but ended up just using the crayons today.
Voila! Our finished project.
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Notes: Mixed media rocks because it gives the children choices and chances to IMMEDIATELY compare the feel of crayon vs marker or the look of marker vs watercolor.
However, I just chose crayons today.
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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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