In the current climate of state-mandated education standards and assessment that prioritize math and language arts in U.S. schools, drawing, an accessible and/or pleasurable endeavor for a wide variety of children, is undervalued. Although research in art education over the past four decades has shown children's drawing and drawings to be rich…

This article describes an integrated art and early literacy project entitled, Picture Partners". The main purpose of the project was to explore how young children create and express meaning through art. Children's responses, both written and spoken, were included because accompanying modes of expression expand the nature and content of their…

The purpose of this study was to investigate methods of enhancing kindergarteners' artistic creative thinking and expressive drawing through an activity that involved appreciation of picture books. The study was conducted in a public kindergarten in southern Taiwan, with 27 children aged between 4 and 5. The researcher conducted the study in 16…

Our purpose is to offer children tasks so they can make drawings as diverse and different from each other whilst trying to avoid imitation. Achieving this goal involves the increase of children's creativity. The paper is theoretically based on the consideration of creativity as the ability to create "something new, original, and in accordance…

Kinder-artists at Oakhurst Elementary love rodeo time, which is an annual event in Fort Worth, Texas. The spirit of the Old West pervades as children don jeans, hats, boots, and bandannas to be a cowboy or cowgirl for the day. Furthermore, Fort Worth is a city that celebrates not only its history as "Cowtown" but also the fine arts! An…

This study describes the results of an empirical research project concerning the artistic abilities of children aged 4, 5 and 6 years and their development, when these children make drawings within a "guided" teaching intervention. This research is based on an operational use of Luquet's ideas, which have been used, not only as a…

Ruth Faison Shaw was an art educator who developed a nontraditional educational perspective of teaching and a different vision about children's art. As such, she is considered by some to be the initiator of finger-painting in America (The History of Art Education Timeline 1930-1939, 2002.) Shaw developed the technique of finger-painting and a…

Experienced educator Donna Whyte has compiled her ideas for using film containers in the classroom into "131 Ways to Use Film Containers" so that they can be shared with other teachers. She includes engaging ways to use them in teaching children about word families, sight words, and punctuation marks; skip counting, estimating, and predicting; and…