7.5: Supporting the Visual Arts

Preschool children often have a natural inclination to create visual art. Making marks, squishing clay, and using a brush to apply color are activities that most young children find appealing. In groups where children speak multiple languages and may not share common vocabulary, visual art can create connections and serve as a means of communication. Art can become a way for people to connect across cultures to their common humanity; an appreciation for it may begin in preschool. Inviting families into the environment to share works of art from their homes is an opportunity to build a bridge to their homes.

Young children are naturally creative. The visual art framework is designed to encourage creativity; open-ended projects emphasize the process of working with visual materials. In other words, the curriculum is not focused on encouraging a child to produce a specific painting, but rather on practicing the use of a brush on paper without a predetermined outcome.

Figure

11.9: This child painting at the easel.[1]

Children are both consumers and creators of the visual arts, which is reflected in the foundations:

Visual Art

Refer to the Creative Arts content area in the Kansas Early Learning Standards for specific indicators of how children of various ages meet the benchmarks and standards in the visual arts (Kansas State Department of Education, 2024).  

Developmental Sequence of Drawing

When provided with tools and a supportive environment, children ages three to five progress more rapidly in the visual arts than during any other two-year period before adulthood. Creativity and imagination reach their peak at around age four and a half; most experienced preschool teachers will attest to this. The arts are a natural outlet for a preschooler's creative thinking, and learning occurs at a rapid pace.

The progression of children’s drawing ability is the most documented in the visual arts. When children are given a means and a place to make marks, they begin with a series of vertical lines and move on to mandalas (i.e., repeated circles). The mandalas soon sprout legs, arms, faces, and more detailed features such as hair, fingers, or eyes. Harvard University Professor Howard Gardner refers to this process as “the birth of the potato person.” This research has gained such widespread recognition that medical doctors will now assess children’s intellectual progress by asking the child and parent to describe the details in the child’s human-figure drawings (rather than focusing on letters and numbers) during the four-year and five-year checkups. Because children speak multiple languages and progress at different rates in writing skills, the question about drawing is more relevant and telling for this age group.

 

 Figure 11.10: Early, nonrepresentational mark-making

 Figure 11.12: A mandala becomes an early representational drawing of a sun.

 Figure 11.13: The emergence of the “potato person”: a first effort at representing a person

Figure 11.14: A more advanced drawing: person wearing “sparkly shoes”

The progress of children's painting is not as well-documented as their drawing progress. In general, children begin by simply experimenting with brushstrokes and the process of applying paint to a surface. Children’s first paintings are usually solid sections of a single color, two colors, or at most three colors. The brushstrokes begin to change directions, and shapes emerge. Finally, children begin to attempt representational paintings. The subject matter of such paintings varies depending on the child, the teacher, and the environment.[2]

Teachers can support children’s development of the visual arts foundations with the following:

• Encourage engagement with art at all levels.
• Support exploration and discovery.
• Give children the time and space needed to explore creativity.
• Provide a comfortable environment in which children can practice art.
• Provide opportunities for children to reflect on their own work.
• Respect individual developmental, cultural, and linguistic differences, and encourage children to respect them.
• Provide children simply with a means and place to make marks (e.g., a crayon and paper), and they will begin with the same basic images.
• Encourage communication around shape and form to aid children’s drawing skills.
• Help children acquire painting skills through practice with the tools.
• Stimulate children’s interest in color and the application of paint through other forms of painting.
• Create opportunities for children to work with dough, clay, or wet sand.
• Provide only the malleable material, without tools, during children’s initial sculpting explorations so that children can explore through touch.
• Communicate with a group of linguistically and culturally diverse children through sculpture techniques by using nonverbal methods.
• Introduce tools after observing that children have had many “hands-on” opportunities to explore clay and dough sculpture.[3]

Figure 11.15: Working with clay is a different experience from working with playdough.[4]

Table 11.2: Suggested Materials for Visual Art[5]

Type of Materials	Examples of Materials
Found or Recycled Materials	Old magazines for cutting and assemblage, toilet paper, and paper towel rolls
Basic	Tempera paints, construction paper, chunky crayons, tray watercolors
Enhanced	Tube watercolors and palette; watercolor paper
Natural Environment	Sticks, rocks, and pinecones for sculpture; clay and natural materials for pressing
Adaptive Materials	Thicker handles on some materials; an easel that can be adjusted to an appropriate height

Vignettes

Ms. Cheng is showing children how colors can be mixed to create other colors. While pouring some yellow paint on the plate, she says, “What is this color?” “Yellow!” shout the children. Knowing that some children speak other home languages, Ms. Lin asks, “Milagros, how do you say yellow in Spanish?” “Amarillo,” Milagros answers. “Samantha, how do you say yellow in Mandarin?” “Huang!” Samantha answers. Ms. Cheng pours out some blue paint and asks the same set of questions. As she moves on to mix the two colors, they turn green. This time, without prompting, some children shout, “Green!” others say, “¡Verde!” and others say, “Lu!”

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It is springtime. The children have returned from a walk outdoors with handfuls of yellow flowers. The teacher places the flowers in a cup in the middle of the painting area and asks the children the color of the flowers. Then he asks, “What shapes do you see in the flower?” The children say, “Circles!” “Lines!” “Squares!” The teacher says, “Really? Where?” The children point at different parts of the flower. The teacher brings out brushes and paint and asks the children if they would like to paint the flowers.

Many of the children sit down and begin to work with the materials, producing all kinds of images. When a child has too much paint on the brush, the teacher assists in showing the child how to wipe paint from the brush on the side of the paint container. As the children finish, the teacher encourages them to discuss their paintings and place them in the drying area. Some children finish quickly, and others become absorbed and work for a very long time. Some want to try several times on a new paper. A few children attempt to represent the flowers in their paintings, and others experiment with the movement of the brushes and the mixing of colors on the paper.[6]

References

[1] The California Preschool Curriculum Framework, Volume 2 by the California Department of Education is used with permission

Kansas State Department of Education. (2024). Kansas early learning standards. https://kels.ksde.org/

[2] The California Preschool Curriculum Framework, Volume 2 by the California Department of Education is used with permission

[3] The California Preschool Curriculum Framework, Volume 2 by the California Department of Education is used with permission

Source of foundations: The California Preschool Curriculum Framework, Volume 2 by the California Department of Education is used with permission

[4] Image by Jennifer Paris is licensed by CC-BY-4.0

[5] The California Preschool Curriculum Framework, Volume 2 by the California Department of Education is used with permission

[6] The California Preschool Curriculum Framework, Volume 2 by the California Department of Education is used with permission