Week 1 Reflection

This week’s workshop really taught me the important of creative early childhood art experiences and introduced ways of doing so appropriately.
Specifically I became aware of the various values of visual arts, in particular expressing feelings, communication and representation of culture and society are some of many reasons why visual arts is a valuable experience for young children. I also learnt the relevance of Piaget’s theory of development with regard to visual arts. First, children learn how to manipulate through discovery and experimentation. Then they start to symbolize different parts of their life and learn that symbols can represent real life people/objects/actions. Following this they start to draw things as they actually appear, which is the representational phase. Consideration of this theory of development can help with planning useful visual arts experiences for students. For example, in a kindergarten setting, simply letting children experience, experiment and explore with different art equipment can be really useful and helpful for a child’s development.

This week’s reading supported some of the topics and notions discussed in the workshop. For example Wright also raises the fact that art can help evoke emotions and build a line of communication, “art has the power to affect our mood, empower us, make us feel dumb or student, help us make friends, learn, connect”, (Wright, 2012). I found this a very important notion to consider and understand when understanding the importance and value of visual arts experiences for early childhood learners.

Art Experience

- Ages 2 to 3 Students are given materials and told to experiment and play with them and see how they can be manipulated. The teacher does not tell the children to paint something in particular. Students are given complete freedom.

- Primary colours in the form of paint
- Paper
- Long brushes
- Sponges

 Responding:
Teacher's Support:
- This uses Piaget's theory of development as it is allowing children in their manipulative stage to discover and experiment with materials and media.
- Also uses Dewey's theory children should be given freedom and allowed to exercise expression in educational settings and not be confined by tasks set out by educators.