One afternoon during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown, as I was retooling my in-person courses for online instruction, I took a break to see how the educators and artists I follow on Instagram were faring. As I scrolled through a variety of posts, I happened upon an image showing a page torn from the 1940 children's book "Lentil"…

Te aim of this paper is studying ways in which originality of elementary school students can be stimulated through the use of artistic activities. The paper is theoretically grounded in considering originality as the capacity to deliver new ideas, ingenious, unconventional, unusual and shocking solutions (Mihaela Roco, 2004; H. Jaoui, 1975; Al.…

Adults have long been fascinated by children's drawings and paintings. Significant research has been done on the development of representational imagery. Most young children are not primarily focused on the visual appearance of the final image. Instead they are engaged in the unfolding and observation of their ideas, their experience, and the…

This article explores aspects of young children's three-dimensional development in art making. Understanding young children's three-dimensional awareness and development is often a neglected area of early childhood educators' education and practice and often children's creative potential is not fully realised. The present article is based on a…

The author presents three fragments from the art work of a class of American elementary school children to illustrate the imaginative power of children's thought and language.

In this article, the author explores the multimodal poems, digital photographs, and three-dimensional artistic creations of young children who live by the sea. Encouraged by their teachers and adult artists, the children learned to look closely at the sign systems of art and poetry to open up worlds of image creation and metaphor making. Teachers…

The Egyptian architect Wissa Wassef believed artistry in crafts to be an innate human characteristic that would be universally expressed under the right conditions, i.e., the practice of the craft from early childhood. When he had Egyptian peasant children with no previous art experience weave tapestries, the results astounded the world. (RM)

In this article, the authors describe Picture Power, a project they implemented during late spring in a full-day Montessori preschool-kindergarten program in Philadelphia. In this project, the authors set out to gather information about children's visual learning. The underlying question was whether artwork could provide useful clues to inform…

Young Artists is the annual exhibition of student art work from the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, public schools, which is displayed from late May to early September in the museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center. The program is described and some of the winning artwork is reproduced. (RM)

Discusses the use of wheels in children's art. Focuses on collecting wheels, ideas for decorating different artworks with wheels, and objects that can move on wheels. Sees wheels as an inspiration for children's art, reflecting on the use of this object in the art classroom. (CMK)

Discusses the use of the chalkboard as a surface for creating art and enabling young students to express their creativity. Explores different ways that art teachers can use chalkboards, such as for taking attendance, for use during a child's time-out, or a place to rehearse an artwork. (CMK)

Art historians are saying that while art outside the mainstream challenges many usual assumptions about art history, more attention should be given to nontraditional art genres such as graffiti, folk art, children's art, prehistoric cave paintings, and the art of the insane. (MSE)

Describes how children six years and older can create plaster friezes. Children were first shown examples and then drew plans before creating their own friezes. (KM)

Discusses the importance of designing settings for children that encourage hands-on creativity through play. Suggests the designs are art forms requiring a participatory art teaching style. Describes the technique and provides proven design ideas. (CMK)

Focuses on children as "wrapping artists," stating that a child's wrapping art includes elements of ritual: finding a special object, selecting and customizing the wrapper, and participating in the unwrapping event. Discusses surface decorating, the exploration of form through wrapping, and collecting wrapping-art. (CMK)