Week of the Young Child: Artsy Thursday

Art is a place for children to learn to trust their ideas, themselves, and to explore what is possible. MaryAnn F. Kohl

Children are natural artists who create masterpieces daily. They explore with different mediums to express their creativity. They communicate through their drawings, paintings and sculptures by representing what they are seeing and feeling beyond verbal expression. They are problem solving as they use a variety of materials and experiment with the properties of each material. They are expressing their feelings as they manipulate the Play-Doh, make marks on paper and build with blocks.

It is not about the end product, but the exploration and freedom of creating something personal that represents the child. These experiences build connections within the brain that develop essential thinking skills, pattern recognition, mental representations, symbolic representation and abstract thinking.

Students in Kelli Girardin’s classroom at Summerdale Early Childhood Center are enjoying painting with smelly paints that have been infused with extracts such as mint, orange, lemon and vanilla. This is one way they engage multiple senses in an art experience.

Interested in learning more about RPS 205 Early Childhood opportunities for children birth to age 5? Visit rps205.com/enroll/early-childhood or call the Early Childhood Screening and Placement Office at 815-229-2103.

This blog post is part of a series celebrating the Week of the Young Child. The WOYC is an annual celebration sponsored by the National Association for the Education of Young Children to focus public attention on early learning, young children, their teachers, families and communities.

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Hillary Cook-Harris

Hillary Cook-Harris is the Director of Early Childhood Curriculum and Assessment. Hillary joined RPS 205 in November 2019 after relocating from Michigan. She has been an Early Childhood educator and director for more than 25 years.