Why Work with Art in Education?
Adapted from an article in “Explorations with Young Children”
by Leah Levinger and Ann-Marie Mott

Art is a way to express our personal feelings. Using hands, eyes, and mind, the artist makes an inner image external. Artists seek to express and communicate a personal vision through visual representation. Because our goal with children is to have them communicate just such a personal vision, we want to respond to the serious inquiries and discoveries that we see in their artwork. Art is hard, disciplined work and, at the same time, the sheer joy of “messing about.”

Why work with Art?

Art is a vital part of the curriculum for children of all ages. Art materials attract their curiosity and desire to explore. If materials are not available, children will draw with sticks in the dirt, “paint” with water on sidewalks, and build structures with mud and sand.

Art stimulates children’s expressiveness and helps them examine some of the complexities of the real world in small, manageable pieces. Through art, they can recreate and integrate curriculum experiences, including social studies, science, and math concepts. When children have many opportunities to explore and enjoy working with art materials, they discover that they can make graphic or three-dimensional symbols that others understand and respond to, just as people respond to works, numbers, musical sounds, and gestures. And working with art materials gives children a sense of pride in their own creativity.

On this site, you can find suggestions for ways you can support children as they express and communicate their own feelings and ideas with art materials. You can find an approach that supports the creativity that exists in all children (and adults). The site focuses on the basic materials of art — pencils, crayons, craypas, paint, clay, and collage — and how children at different stage of growth change and develop in their artwork. (Keep in mind that the same principles apply to many other art and craft media, such as blocks, woodworking, stitchery, weaving, beading, and printmaking.) As a caregiver or teacher, you may want to explore and try out some of the materials for yourself, in order to understand the child’s experience with art — remembering, however, that your artwork will reflect your more mature way of thinking and diverse experience.