Learning to paint watercolor can be overwhelming. Progress can be slow sometimes.
5 Effective Strategies for Integrating Art into Early Childhood Education
Art is a universal language transcending age, culture, and background, making it a powerful tool for early childhood educators. In the vibrant world of an early childhood classroom, art becomes more than just a creative outlet; it becomes a gateway to learning, self-expression, and holistic development. By integrating art into the early childhood curriculum, educators can foster imagination, fine motor skills, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence in young learners. This article highlights the benefits of incorporating art into lessons in early childhood settings, strategies to integrate art into lessons, and a few practical ideas.
Art Integration Benefits
- Fostering Imagination: Incorporating art boosts children’s self-confidence and helps them develop critical cognitive skills. They learn about colors, shapes, and spatial relationships as they imagine and create. They experiment with cause and effect by mixing colors or trying different techniques.
- Fine Motor Skills: Art activities such as cutting, drawing, and manipulating small objects can significantly enhance fine motor development. When a child carefully cut along the lines of a paper shape or uses a paintbrush to create intricate details in a picture, they are honing their fine motor skills.
- Critical Thinking: When a child decides how to represent an idea in their artwork or choose which materials to use, they make crucial decisions. They are learning to think creatively, plan, and make choices—a critical skill set for all aspects of life.
- Emotional Intelligence: Children can express their feelings, fears, and joys through artwork. This can be especially important for children facing challenging situations or dealing with emotions they don’t fully understand. Art allows them to externalize what’s happening inside and helps educators and caregivers gain insight into their emotional world. Teachers can help children build emotional intelligence, empathy, and self-awareness by acknowledging and discussing their creations.
- Embracing Diversity: Early childhood educators can incorporate art projects celebrating various cultural practices, holidays, and artistic styles. This broadens children’s horizons and fosters an appreciation for diversity. By creating art inspired by different cultures, children can learn about history, geography, and the rich tapestry of humanity while developing a sense of respect and curiosity about the world beyond their own.
Art Integration into ECE Lessons
Remember that in an early childhood education environment, the process of creating art is more important than the final product. Encourage open-ended activities that allow for self-expression, creativity, and exploration. Celebrate and display children’s artwork in the classroom to promote a sense of pride and accomplishment. Finally, be adaptable and flexible in accommodating each child’s developmental needs and interests.
Here’s why in a nutshell:
I’ve taught over tens of thousands of children how to paint and draw and it comes down to simple milestones children must go through to build artist skills.
Drawing is defiantly a natural skill that gets better as children grow.
Drawing is based on three actions I call the – 3 Component skill parts, these three actions are cognitive brain, visual eye perception, and fine-motor development.
Not getting too much into the science behind it, it’s similar to how child learn to ride a bike for the first time.
When a child learns to ride a bike, they learn to get balance, build muscles to hold themselves up on a bike, and know the simple concept to why they want to ride a bike, it’s fun!
As we teach kids to ride a bike we say comments like; pedal, balance your bike, keep your head looking where you’re going, try it again, we even buy them the bike to try to learn to ride.
Kids learning to draw and paint go thru the same type of process.
Just as we teach our kids to ride a bike with encouraging words, the same goes for doodles and painting development.
We can gentally support these milestones that lead to recognizable drawings as they grow.
Trust me, kids learn to doodle and draw nicer pictures as they grow, and collect knowledge about shapes and objects, which always leads to nicer artworks.
Not all kids like to communicate with a drawing pencil. Some embrace it and some don’t, just like the act of riding a bike.
For new parents or young educators this might seem new and hard to know what to say or do when children run-up excited with strange looking doodles.
I’ve see lots of silly articles on the web giving parents advice to talk to their children like an art critique, try not to.
It’s not necessary or valuable until later in their teen years, if they want to pursue a career in visual communication, graphics, illustration for fine arts. You’re not going to stifle their creativity if you don’t start using art language to describe their works.
I would like to share 8 helpful supportive strategies during this normal childhood process.
8 strategies
2. Don’t Analyze Artworks
3. Except Art Play
4. Respond Positivity
5. Ask Positive Questions
6. Showcase Artworks for support
7. Give Positive Body Reassurance
8. Provide Art Supplies for support
8 strategies explained in detail:
1. Listen – Listen first, try not to be so quick in asking what it is or why they created it. Listening can help children talk or describe their works. By listening you wont bring focus to their artistic skill sets, and be given insights to their thought process.
2. Don’t Analyze Artworks – Try NOT to analyze children’s artworks like an art critic, using art language to soon may feel negative to the child.
3. Except Art Play – Mostly at young ages, a child’s artworks are usually experimental and led by curious ideas or simple art play. Doodle play goes on through childhood, through multiple drawings, even sometimes through hundreds of doodles, have patience!
4. Respond Positivity – If your child ask what you think, tell them you find it interesting and ask them to tell you more about their drawings so you can share more of your positive feelings about their artwork.
5. Ask Positive Questions – When a child shows interest and wants to talk about their skill sets, than encourage them by finding a strong point in their artwork. Here’s an example: your child tells you they drew their dog, complement the drawing like this” I like the details you gave your dog”. You can ask them if the drawing is from their imagination, or from looking at their dog or a picture of their dog. If they are old enough this will help them understand the different ways artist can draw. After the age of 9 years would I start talking this way.
6. Give Positive Body Reassurance – Give support to your child when they don’t know what to say about their own work, with a smile. You can say something positive like “I like this drawing, do you want to share with me what you created?”. If they don’t respond to you or can’t describe their artworks, reassure them with a smile of approval.
7. Showcase Artworks for Support – If the child has explained their artworks to you, ask if they if they want to showcase it around the house or classroom, or maybe even give it way to someone special. If your child has made multiple doodles, ask them to pick their favorite one to showcase. It makes it easier for you to not pick the wrong one, plus keeps less paper clutter around.
8. Provide Art Supplies for Support – As a supporter, you should offer more art supplies to experiment with, like papers or different types of drawing supplies. Crayons, color pencils, markers or something special you might have around. If you are in the position to take a request for something new to buy them, then do so to support their drawing interest.
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Practice Between Paintings.
We all love to finish that complete watercolor landscape, see the watercolor street scene come together, or finish a beautiful interior watercolor scene. It is satisfying to complete a full watercolor painting.
But more important than completing paintings is taking time to practice on specific skills or watercolor subjects between your paintings.
If you want to improve in painting skies, set aside 10 minutes a day and just practice skies. If you want to see your figures improve, focus on just them for a while. If you want to to paint better watercolor trees or scenes that include bodies of water, take some time practicing these things in isolation.
One of the beautiful things about watercolor is that it doesn’t take long to practice these things. It is a quick medium if you want to see growth in specific areas.
However, if you wait until you need a particular skill for a painting, chances are you’ll be very disappointed with how it turns out.
Another suggestion I’ll add is to keep a piece of scrap paper beside you while you are painting. On this paper, you can practice your brush mark before you add it on to your painting. Watercolor, as you know, can be pretty unforgiving. What you put on the paper is kind of what you are stuck with. So if you take the time to practice the mark before you make it, you can ensure that you are making the correct mark on your watercolor painting.
Use a Calendar to Track Your Commitment.
This goes back to valuing consistency.
The idea here is very simple: you hang up a calendar and every time you do something to get better as an artist, you mark the day on the calendar. At the end of the month, you have a reflection of your commitment and consistency. You can see all the times that you decided to show up to paint and improve.
This is a great way to value consistency and it’s a visual representation of the work you’ve put in. It nudges you to show up, even on those days you don’t feel like it or only have time for a quick painting exercise.
Don’t Stop.
There are going to be ups and downs in your learning. You might bump into a difficult time in your painting where you feel like you’re plateauing. Or a span of time where you’re not happy with anything you create.
But if you don’t stop painting, if you stick with it, you will make progress over time.
Keep some of your old paintings around because as you progress, you will want to compare your old paintings with your newer paintings. It’s tempting to think that people that know how to paint have always known how to paint. This is not true. He re are a couple of my very first paintings compared to my more recent paintings.
Everyone is starting at the same place. If you’re just getting started, don’t be discouraged. Keep painting, keep moving forward. And you’ll see progress.
