Our car painting turned into a surprise lesson on color mixing!

In our zest to help children “create” sometimes it is easy to forget what it means to be creative… Creativity is inspired when we give children the opportunity to explore the art process and materials without the pressure of having to do it in a specific way… In an effort to teach children, adults get [...]

A drawback to being an administrator in a preschool program is that often times I have to actually “administrate” and when I do, it pulls me away from the classroom. So when this happens, I often only get to see what the children made after they are finished rather than while they are in the process. I [...]

Last week, I visited a class that was making doves as part of their study of peace and MLK. As I observed this class, it was clear to both the teacher and I that this project was a cute idea on paper but pretty worthless when it came to process… That’s the tricky thing about [...]

Allowing children to make decisions is an important aspect of their art experience. When children are constantly told where to place each piece of paper or where to put their hand print, they lose confidence in their own ability to make good choices. When we talk about Process over Product, there are many reasons why [...]

I write a lot of lesson plans and I never know how well something will turn out until I see it in action. One of the best ways to evaluate lesson plans is to observe children in action. When evaluating lesson plans, some questions to ask yourself might include… Were the children interested in the [...]

As a parent, there is nothing more precious to me than hanging up a piece of art my child made out of her own hand or footprint. But as a teacher I sometimes observe hand and footprint art activities and simply wonder where the benefit is to the child.  Don’t get me wrong, I think [...]