No matter your own skills in the arts, this issue of Teaching Young Children has ideas for you. You’ll learn about “process art”, ways to integrate art into other content areas, using music in your setting, and more!
This article shares ways in which process art can help children grow in their expressive language, nurture social and emotional development, and encourage thinking skills.
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 goal.
The following DAP snapshot and reflection touches on how one teacher responded to children’s marks on paper, encouraging creativity and integrated learning, particularly around drawing, writing, and storytelling.
In make-believe play, young children are actively engaged with peers and are in control: it is the children—not an adult—who make decisions during play.
Authored by
Authored by:
Barbara Wilder-Smith Deborah J. Leong Elena Bodrova
Art is important to the development of young children’s physical and cognitive skills and their aesthetic awareness. Examples of children’s creative expressions often fill early childhood settings. But what about appreciating visual art?
In this article, we describe how early childhood educators can purposefully plan for and scaffold vocabulary learning during open-ended art activities.
In this article, Mimi Brodsky Chenfield shares reflections from her experiences and conversations with children across the early childhood years—each of which builds to a major shift, moving from STEM to STEAM.
You don’t need to be a musician to use music comfortably, confidently, and creatively with children. Here are eight ways to make it an integral part of your classroom.
To create a community building event with family involvement, we decided to engage in a Cardboard Challenge focused on trees: How could children build a tree with cardboard-like materials and make it interactive?
In this article, we focus on communication and collaboration—qualities that are important in achieving the critical thinking, creativity, and content knowledge involved across STEAM areas.
In this article, we look at how a service-learning project helped foster receptive language competencies for infants through art experiences and encouraged socially and culturally responsive practices by students.
Knowing that local field trips are a source of curriculum in early childhood education, two teachers venture to a theater with their class, then engage in a project about storytelling, performance, and stages.
One valuable way we can support children’s exploration of nature is by teaching them how to observe carefully and create observational drawings, which encourage children to understand and question their world.
Through music and language, movement, and the visual arts, rap and other elements of hip-hop culture can support preschoolers’ learning and development in all domains.
Empowering Educators & Programs: A Blueprint for Excellence
Teaching Young Children is NAEYC's magazine for anyone who works with preschoolers. Colorful, informative, and easy-to-read, TYC is packed full of teaching ideas, strategies, and tips.
