Guidelines for Art in Early Childhood Settings

These general guidelines can be easily incorporated into a variety of early childhood settings, although suitable art materials, activities, and instructional approaches will be somewhat different for children of different ages. 

1. Infants and Toddlers. At the end of the first year, observation begins to turn into action, and the process of holding a crayon, marker, or paintbrush becomes an interesting challenge for young children. The tools themselves are treated like any other new toy or object that is fun to manipulate and explore. These tools may be used in a variety of unintended ways as children familiarize themselves with them through pretend play (for example, pretending a marker is a hot dog and wrapping it up in a piece of paper). As infants become toddlers and begin to explore activities such as drawing, they watch with extreme interest, amazed when marks actually appear on their paper. Although they are unintentional in their drawing at the beginning, as children continue to develop and practice their ability to make marks on a page, interesting geometric shapes often begin to appear. By the time children are two years old, they are often able to identify body parts and their general location correctly by making simple marks on their paper.
2. Preschoolers and Kindergartners. Toddlers often unintentionally produce geometric shapes while drawing. As children approach the preschool years, such accidental shapes are replaced by a child’s personal system for recording spatial information. Children begin to control their scribbles and eventually give them names, usually as a result of observation after the fact rather than intention. As they begin to realize that their scribbles can and do resemble something specific, they begin to be more intentional in their attempts at representation. During the preschool years, children have little understanding of background or dimension, and the objects in their drawings are generally forward facing and floating in space. As children move into their kindergarten year, their artwork usually becomes much more intentional and begins to take on more adult-like characteristics.
3. Primary Children. As children’s artistic ability continues to develop, so does their ability to record spatial information and create adult-like representations. Figures are now often drawn standing on a baseline facing each other instead of floating in the air facing the viewer, and--for the first time--drawings of people will start to include clothing. With further experience, some children are even able to make objects look farther away by making them smaller or placing them near the top of the page. As they mature, children develop a system of representation that is comfortable for them, and they become more reluctant to experiment with different ways of portraying everyday objects and people.
4. Materials and Activities. One of the primary considerations in selecting art materials and activities for young children is safety. Because of their fascination with art-related materials, very young children will often manipulate and explore them orally by putting them in their mouths. For this reason, it is very important that all materials be checked for toxicity, size (for possible choking hazards), and sharpness (for items such as scissors).

Once the safety of the materials has been established, select items that are high quality, have aesthetic appeal, and are developmentally appropriate. Some of the most common art activities in early childhood settings include painting, drawing, and construction. Construction may include things like making collages, making sculptures with clay, or--in kindergarten and the primary grades--woodworking. As you can imagine, there are countless ways to integrate each of these activities into your early childhood curriculum to create interesting learning experiences for your students. So remember to be intentional in your thinking and planning, to be creative, and to have fun with your art education.