ARTSY THURSDAY!
NAEYC Week of the Young Child
ARTSY THURSDAY!
Preschool Play Plans: Chalk Art
This is the third article in Preschool Play Plans, a TYC series. The plans get children moving, interacting, and laughing—without electronics. These are ideas for open-ended indoor and outdoor activities that use inexpensive or free materials—bubbles, mud, chalk, playdough, and cardboard boxes. The activities are appropriate for preschoolers of all abilities. Share the plans with families—they’re enjoyable for all ages.
Chalk is an open-ended material that offers many creative play experiences. As children write, draw, and play games with chalk, they practice cooperation, turn taking, problem solving, hand–eye coordination (which helps with writing), fine motor skills, and more.
Enhance children’s language skills and vocabulary by describing activities and experiences as the children play: “I see that you’re drawing with the red chalk and I’m drawing with the blue chalk,” or “You drew a chimney on the roof of your house.” Ask simple questions: “What else can you add to your house?,” “How can you make a pattern with the chalk?”
Chalk play can enhance [a] child’s communication skills by simply giving her an opportunity to write letters, draw a picture that has meaning, and invent letters that she wants to practice writing.
—Carly Jennings, Art and Work of Creative Parenting: Chalk It Up to Fun
Watch children as they use the chalk, and note what they’re working on. Then focus on individual children’s interests to help differentiate your teaching. Engage children in learning by talking about their interests.
Here are some ideas for play with chalk.
Chalk Art
Different sizes of chalk
Offer regular chalkboard chalk and chunky sidewalk chalk. Children will enjoy experimenting with the marks they can make. Outdoors, suggest rubbing different surfaces—a brick wall, cement pavement, a rock—using the broad side of the chalk to highlight their varying textures. Remember, chalk will wash off of outdoor surfaces on the next rainy day.
Chalk painting
Using a paintbrush, children can apply water to black paper, then draw on the wet paper with chalk. What happens? Reverse it—draw with chalk, then use a paintbrush to brush the drawing with water. What happens now?
Tracing children
Have each child lie on the sidewalk or other outdoor surface. A teacher or classmate traces the outline of the child using chalk. Children can then add facial features, hair, and clothes to their silhouettes.
Chalk drawing adventure
Inspire children to draw an exciting scene—a superhero flying over buildings, a firefighter climbing a ladder to rescue a pet—and then put themselves into the drawings.
Chalk murals
Children can draw murals using chalk on both light- and dark-colored paper. Spread large pieces of paper—for example, sheets of newspaper or bulletin board paper—on the floor, and let children explore which colors contrast against or fade into the white or black background.
Chalk Projects
Roads for toy cars and trucks
Children and teachers can draw a chalk road on the sidewalk for toy cars and trucks. Add crossroads, curves, landmarks, and destinations.
Patterns
Find a sidewalk with separate cement sections or a path made up of several stepping stones. Children can color them in with chalk to make a pattern and then use the sections to create a game. For example, choose a beginning and an ending stepping stone. Color some of the steps in between with red chalk and others with green. Create cards with numbers 1, 2, and 3 on them. Children take turns picking a card and taking the number of steps indicated on the card. If they land on a red stone, they must go back one step. If they land on a green stone, they can go forward two steps.
You can also make up a story using the sidewalk pattern. For example, the children need to cross a river filled with alligators. Use blue and green chalk to create a river and river bank. Children must cross the “river” by stepping only on the green stepping stones. If they step into the river, they must start over.
Chalk Games
Human board game
Using chalk on the sidewalk, draw a giant Chutes-and-Ladders-style path to create a game board with people-size squares—children are the game pieces! Make it any shape (circle, square, squiggly lines) and length, depending on the children’s ages (fewer shapes for younger children). Include some chance by adding instructions to a few squares, like “Lose a turn” and “Move ahead 2 spaces.” Make a giant die out of a cardboard box. Players take turns rolling the die and moving along the squares until everyone reaches the end.
Tic-Tac-Toe
Play a traditional game of tic-tac-toe, with children writing x’s and o’s with chalk. Or change the game a bit by having children toss pebbles or beanbags toward the squares they want to fill. Their toss counts only if the pebble or beanbag stays in the square.
Message in a Backpack™ Encouraging Process Art at Home: Reaping the Benefits of Joy and Making
LORETTA FERNANDO-SMITH
People often think about art as creating something beautiful—a replica Starry Night collage or a seasonal craft to serve as a gift. But when children engage in process art, they explore and experience materials without working toward a particular end product. In this case, going through the process of making art is more important than the results or outcomes.
There are many benefits to be gained from process art. It can be playful and joyful, and it nurtures having an open mind, trying new things, and building curiosity and resilience. It also requires minimal adult preparation.
You can encourage process art at home without being an artist yourself. And you don’t need to go out and buy expensive art supplies. Instead, you can use materials from your home and from nature. Find a flat, roomy space where your child can work (a table, the floor, or even a grassy area can all be great working spaces), then set it with materials that will encourage open-ended exploration. Be sure to include
- items that can serve as a base for your child’s work (cardboard, placemats, clay, or playdough)
- a variety of objects for your child to explore (paper plates, colored paper, beads, buttons, and natural materials such as sticks and leaves)
- something that will help your child connect those objects to their base and to each other (masking tape, glue, pipe cleaners)
- a variety of tools (scissors, various sized brushes, blunt-edged instruments to cut playdough or clay)
While your child creates, consider joining them. You can either work on your own art alongside them or ask to join in whatever they’re making. While you don’t need to talk the whole time, you can ask some key what, how, and why questions to help your child share what’s on their mind as they make art. These could include
- “What is your plan?”
- “How will you make it happen?”
- “Tell me more about why you chose this material?”
If your child is not ready to speak yet, you can put words to their actions by narrating what they are doing. (“I noticed that you stuck pipe cleaners into the playdough to make a birthday cake with candles. What a creative idea!”)
Children often encounter challenges during process art. They may become frustrated because their work does not accurately reflect what they’re thinking, or they might struggle with a technical issue, such as attaching a cardboard cylinder securely to a box. When this happens, wait: Give your child space to work through a problem and make mistakes along the way. If they ask for your help, acknowledge what they’ve done, break down the problem, then make a plan for some steps they can take to resolve it.
Stay open-minded about what your child is doing. Their creations might not be what you expect, but the real beauty lies in their journey of thought, exploration, and discovery.
Meaningful Art Projects Parents Can Fit Into a Busy Day
Richard Rende, Ph.D.
Art projects offer children and families many benefits. Child development and pediatrics experts agree that even short spurts of creative time greatly impact social, cognitive, and emotional development of children in their earliest formal years and create long-lasting memories. It’s important to remember that a meaningful art project doesn’t need to take a lot of parent preparation time.
Here are a few tips to help busy families engage in meaningful art projects.
1. Eliminate the pressures that make art projects difficult
Art projects don’t need to take a lot of parent prep time. Use items that you already have around the house – like paper towel rolls or cotton balls – to eliminate time needed to go to the store and purchase special supplies. And keep staple items on-hand that can be used for a variety of art projects - such as paper, paint, tape, crayons, and glue. You can take them out and add in other items you have to the mix.
2. Let children take the creative lead
Parents promote creativity, thinking, planning and other important skills when they let kids take the lead on art projects. The creative spark is lit when kids try to figure out how things work on their own.
A number of recent studies have shown that young children display more advanced cognitive skills when adults use less instruction. One of the key reasons is that this allows kids to practice what’s known as “counterfactual” reasoning, the process of mental “trial and error” that is an early emerging aspect of innovative thinking. For example, ‘What happens if I paste this piece of fabric here instead of there?’ or ‘What if I paint this dog green?’ By hanging back and encouraging kids to try out their own ideas versus giving a strict pattern to follow, parents can support the roots of innovation.
3. Allow children to use their hands to create their project
Art projects also offer many ways for children to build their small muscles and improve their fine motor development. When children use scissors, squeeze a glue bottle or mold clay they strengthen the muscles needed to master using a pencil at school later on.
4. Support but don’t take over
The benefits from doing art projects independently are critical for academic readiness.
Parents can support their children by encouraging them, helping with suggestion, and stepping in only when really needed. While it might take your child longer to open a glue bottle or paint tube, these are important ways children can develop the muscles they will need for school.
5. Praise their efforts, not the product itself
It’s clear from research that praising children for their effort, not the quality of the final product, supports the future mindsets that underlie success in academics, sports, and arts.
Art projects offer a perfect platform for encouraging and reinforcing effort rather than focusing on outcome.
For example, parents can acknowledge something specific a child spent time on like making a particularly interesting color when mixing paints or acknowledging a specific skill like cutting with scissors instead of focusing on how the final project looks.
6. Remember – you’re creating happy memories
The fact that you’re supporting your child’s creativity and spending time together is important. One of the most important benefits children and parents both reap from arts and crafts is that, years from now, it won’t matter what was created, just that it was created as children and parents spent time together.
Interesting materials, smiles, laughs, and some silliness keep kids engaged. Not only will this lead to cognitive benefits, but also bonding time with parents. Kids will form lasting memories that will stay with them for years to come.
Director of Early Childhood & Family Education
Email: jennifer.willoughby@superior.k12.wi.us
Website: https://www.superior.k12.wi.us/schools/earlychildhood
Phone: 715-394-8700 (10184)