Noting that the preschool years provide an optimal time for developing fundamental skills with lifelong implications, this paper examines the role of art in early childhood education, arguing that art improves the quality of life for young children. The paper maintains that art is the basis of early learning and that allowing children to…

Results of this study suggest the feasibility of using concepts from studies of spoken language for experimental studies of graphic performance. (Authors)

This article discusses how parents nurture their children's interest and passion for the arts, and describes the art education model in place at one Montessori school, involving integration with cultural studies and music as part of the daily learning experience. Suggestions for family art activities include creating family art projects, playing a…

Investigated the development of individual style in 3- to 10-year-old children's drawings. Assessed about one-third of children as having distinctive styles; these children were most frequently younger and showed higher aesthetic and creativity ratings in their drawings. Considered the probable sequence in children's development of artistic style.…

In this article, the author discusses children's art and writing and how they connect. Different ages and stages of art and writing are presented. The process of creating handmade books is another area where art and writing intersect. Since both are an important means of communication, books are an important way to combine art and writing, and to…

This article, which is a revised version of a paper presented at the XXIV World Congress of OMEP conference in Melbourne in July 2004, reports on a study that explored young children's (5-9 years) vision of their future environment in South Africa--as temporal dimension, illustrating their conceptual understanding of this concept. A sample of 320…

This book explores how young children learn to draw and draw to learn, at home and school. It provides support for practitioners in developing a pedagogy of drawing in Art and Design and across the curriculum and provide advice for parents about how to make sense of their children's drawings. This book is enlivened with the real drawings of seven…

This paper discusses research methods used to examine children's art. The first part of the paper presents information on four theoretical approaches to the examination of children's art and discusses the teacher's role within that approach: (1) psychological approach, using art to discover the child's inner conflicts; (2) behavioral psychological…

These studies confirm the view that the "air gap" phenomenon, which refers to the area that remains when ground and sky lines are constructed at the bottom and top of a drawing, is commonly found in the free drawings of middle and later childhood, but that it is readily abandoned when task demands are modified accordingly. (Author/DB)

Young children drew two opaque objects placed one behind the other. Over two-thirds of the children drew the objects separately in horizontal or vertical relationships. When drawing an object in a glass beaker, half of the children depicted the object vertically or horizontally separate from the beaker. (Author/DB)

Provides examples from a study of six test segments of the television series "Alam Simsim," the Egyptian "Sesame Street," to illustrate how a systematic analysis of children's artwork can be used with other research tools to gain feedback from children. Shows how formative research is used to bring children into the production…

This article explores the graphic development of a five-year-old girl with autism during Saturday morning art classes. It attempts to uncover what particular methods of consideration are useful in the examination of the art of such a child. Drawing systems and early mathematics are found to be of value in discussing Sung's art making since both…

The study was conducted with a group of 5 and 6 year old children in one playschool in Reykjavik, Iceland. The purpose of the study was to shed light on what life in an Icelandic playschool is like for the children attending the program, finding out their views on why they attend playschool, what they do and learn in playschool, what the adults do…

This study examined characteristics of human figures representing the self as drawn by 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds and the presence of age or gender differences. A total of 150 children who were selected randomly from day care centers drew themselves on paper with crayons. There were equal numbers of boys and girls in each age group. Human figure…

Presents case studies of two children of four and five years who had experienced sexual abuse. Discusses the significance of their drawings in relation to the uncovering and treating of the trauma of sexual abuse. (RJC)