Many people have seen "The Kiss" (1907-08), an iconic artwork by Austrian Symbolist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), but know little about its background. Since its creation, the sensual subject matter and lush golden patterns have been this culture's example of romantic love. The painting exemplifies Klimt's brand of Art Nouveau. Acceptance often eluded…

This paper explores a number of examples of what appeared to be recurring symbolic expressions of spirituality found in my recent research into the spiritual experiences of children in Victorian State primary schools. These expressions appeared in drawings and in conversation. In this paper I use hermeneutic phenomenology and a multidisciplinary…

Previous research on children's drawing and writing focused on children's drawing and symbolization with syllabic languages, providing little information regarding young children's symbolization in drawing with a logo language. This study investigated children's emergent writing by examining qualitatively how children's writing takes place as…

This visual journey, which revisits childhood art as an entry point to inquiry centred on my landscapes of meaning as an educator, represents a self portrait about identity and place that is told from the multiple subjective geographies of self. My collection of childhood artwork offers a different lens to understand historical conditioning and…

From a sociocultural approach to literacy, young children, including culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) children, can be viewed as active meaning-makers through participation in everyday literacy practices. This theoretical emphasis on the importance of the social context requires teachers and caregivers not only to improve and co-create…

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…

Some research within developmental psychology shows a slow period of development in children's expressive drawings during the primary school years. Developmental researchers suggest that "educational factors" could contribute to this dip in development but have not explored these factors. This study explores links between educational…

This arts-based research illustrates how young children engage in "graphic-narrative play"--a personal fantasy-based experience depicted on paper--while representing imaginary worlds centered on the topic, "what the future will be like". The descriptions show how the children not only made representations, but also manipulated…

Drawing helps children organize their ideas for expression in story writing in several ways. Drawing promotes the first writing, and this writing becomes the first reading material that children themselves author. Children draw pictures and write to organize ideas and construct meaning from their experiences. Open-ended opportunities to write and…

This article presents sixty ideas for celebrating the arts. These ideas include concepts about sparking creativity among children. A list of benefits of arts education is also included.

Although sociocultural theory challenges educators to embrace the social nature of learning, common practice in early childhood art has varied little from its traditional stance on natural art development, adult non-intervention, and the sacrosanct nature of creativity and artistic expression--outdated relics on hallowed ground. Despite mounting…

This study examines the interrelationships among art, play and "real" life, as perceived by young children. Twenty-one children aged four and five in their first year of formal schooling in Ireland, were observed during art-related play activities and classes over a period of four months in 2004. Research data consisted of art works…

Defines the concept of the phenomenal--as opposed to the objective--body and points to modern, primitive, and children's art as rich sources of phenomenal representation. (SJL)

This article describes an activity that required students in third and fourth grade classes to create a life-size, standing self-portrait. The idea was not just to create a picture of themselves to display on a wall or board, but to make "another self" that could interact in the school environment. After completion, the life-size portraits were…