This research shares the exploration of fundamental sketch aesthetics in preschool children's educational activities on visual arts skills. The exploration of this study is bound to the involvement of visual arts essential activities to the advancement of children's preschool skills. The knowledge concerns following the advances of curative…

Drawing is one of children's modes of communication which has recently excited academic inquiry in non-Western cultures. It is the means through which children express their fears, desires, anxieties and conception of phenomena. This study investigated drawings by four- to ten-year-old Botswana children in response to the human figure as an…

In this article, I consider the changing landscape of art education and explore potential directions for the field to situate itself within the spaces of early childhood education. I position that current understandings of child art and its use in both research and practice in the early childhood classroom are limited by a lack of connection to…

Namibia's cheetah population has predominantly been threatened by human conflict related to livestock farming and habitat loss. Cheetahs have been indiscriminately persecuted as a mortal threat to livestock, as well as suffered from human-caused land use change. The Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) in Otjiwarongo, Namibia conducts cheetah research…

Jessica and Isabella were immediately drawn to the new chalk available on the patio. As soon as they saw the big basket, they found an open space and began testing the colors. The authors recently brought this story to their planning time with Deb, to share the photos and notes they had collected of Jessica and Isabella working with the chalk.…

This article explores contemporary forms of creative practices and their survival under siege from what Stuart Hall (2011) describes as the neoliberal revolution, in the context of the tightly policed education system in the United Kingdom. The fragility and importance of the democratic struggle is discussed with reference to Chantal Mouffe's work…

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…

Analyzed two sets of Japanese children's artworks, one in the graphic narrative style, the other, school art in the "high" art tradition. Argues that art derived from popular models provides children with important ways to investigate meaningful dimensions of the world and to experiment with life's major themes, dimensions of meaning…

Frames a developmental psychology of art by contrasting the structural orientation of the study of drawing and the functional orientation of the study of artistry. This model maintains that graphic symbolization emerges with early mark-making, children's representative art is guided by perceptions of affordances, and children continue to engage in…

This handbook demonstrates how studio art concepts may be broken down into their simplest level, thus, allowing preschool and elementary students to work with one particular concept and technique at a time. Teachers are encouraged to coordinate open-ended painting activities with major study units taking place in the classroom. The fourteen…

This text is designed for use by college and university students who plan to teach art to children. After an introduction that briefly explains the four components of discipline-based art education, the text is organized in six chapters. (1) "Artists and the Images They Make" introduces students to ideas about how several specific…