Kindergarten students express themselves through Visual Arts was recorded 11 years

ago. How has the classroom changed since then? Answer in 50 words or less.
It hasn’t really. I think educators have finally caught onto the concept of encouraging
children “to be expressive in their own way” 3:30 – 3:33 and realizing that by teaching this
way it “meets a lot of different learning styles” 0:20 – 0:21 and can support more children,
which makes me happy.
References

Trillium Lakelands District School Board. (2012). Kindergarten students express themselves

through Visual Arts. Www.YouTube.com.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrPV85F_Xis

Peer Response to Jessyca Evrall

Jessyca, When you stated, “other days the children are free to take their art in any way
that they choose” I thought back to the YouTube video’s that we watched from the Ontario
Science Center (2017) which highlighted how providing “choice allows children to take
ownership of their learning” (1:09) and “supports a growth mindset and promotes learning
across domains” (1:54 – 2:00).
References
Ontario Science Center. (2017). How to get into Play-Based Learning: Part 1 - What is Play?

[YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31gZZZ-XG94

Katie’s Response to Me.

Hi Adele,
Thank you for sharing your post.
I agree that visual arts in kindergarten really have not changed that much, and
expressive art is very important especially in the early years. A question I do have is, do
you believe there is a place in kindergarten for explicit teaching of visual art? Do you
think it is important for children to learn the elements of art early on? Children often
learn about lines, shapes, forms in math and they learn about space, value, and texture
through reading books and exploring their environment, but I believe it is important for
them to connect those elements to the art they are creating.
Lots to think about,
Thanks again,
Katie

Peer Response to Katie

Thank you for responding to my post Katie. In response to your question, I think
Children learn the elements as they are exploring with different hand movements and mediums
as well as responding to things that they can already identify in their surroundings. We don't
have to explicitly teach them the different elements through a direct lesson, we could look for
presence of the elements in their own artwork or environment and then just start an open
discussion with them about how it represents a specific art element. For example, we could talk
to them about the different things they can see around the classroom that fit into the category of
geometric shapes or organic shapes or we could talk about how they used primary colors in their
drawing or artwork or mixed those colors to get secondary colors. We can talk about placement
and space by standing in a line up! I am excited to learn more ways to incorporate cross-
disciplinary content that relates to Art
Thanks for sharing,
Adele