Early Learning to Last a Lifetime by Dr. Sue Snyder
We adults have so many pressures on our daily decisions about young children, and our choices will impact our children’s entire lives. Should the arts be part of your daily plans? Why?
Research tells us that when children have different, novel experiences, their brains grow, and that sound, movement, images, and words stimulate different parts of the brain. When we provide experiences in music, movement, visual art, and expressive language, we help children build brains that are ready to learn. Creativity combines skills that include problem solving and making new patterns out of known elements. When we provide open-ended arts experiences that offer the opportunities to combine elements and solve problems, the arts become a lab for learning how to learn.
You will find that the most important activities are simple and fun. With young children, you may need to model behaviors, and they will imitate. But quickly they become the leaders, and you'll be amazed at how you grow together! Because there are no right answers… but only possibilities…the arts provide their own novelty and intrinsic reward. Remember: the process is more important than the product.
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Sound/Music experiences:
Notice that your infant imitates the tune of your sentences before beginning to imitate individual sounds. Reinforce this process by imitating your baby's sound sentences.
Imitate the sounds around you - bird whistles, machines, cars, wind, and so on. As your children get older, make pictures to match the sounds, put them in an order, and follow them from left to right, or around in a circle, to create a sound piece.
Use your kitchen utensils and other available materials to make and categorize sounds. Which ones are metal and ring (perhaps a pot lid with a spoon)? Which ones are wood (wood blocks), drums (oatmeal or yogurt containers), shakers (rice in a margarine container)? Suggest an order the sounds can be played in and how many times each will be played. As children become older, match each sound to a picture, shape, or color. Perhaps write the number of times to play on the picture. This process helps the child develop the concept of reading music because, in these activities, you are demonstrating that symbols represent sounds.
Image/art experiences:
Point out lines, shapes, colors, and textures in the environment. Provide paper and drawing materials such as pencils, paint, and washable markers for children to explore. Help them learn how to fill the paper out to all the sides, and use both sides of the paper. Identify the top, bottom, and sides.
Demonstrate making straight and curved lines on paper, or using string or Wikki Sticks. Say what you are doing, so the child begins to develop a visual-arts vocabulary. When straight, curved, and zig-zag lines are mastered, add closed shapes such as circles and squares.
When you look at a child's drawing, rather than using judgment words ("That's so good!"), identify the features you see in the work. ("You made lots of straight lines. And look at this wavy line; it goes all around the edges of the paper! I'm going to try that the next time I make a picture.")
Arrange shapes and colors into collages, gluing the pieces down only after arranging them several ways. Encourage the idea that the first arrangement is not usually the final product.
Movement experiences:
Demonstrate how to move in different ways such as bending, stretching, twisting, walking tiptoeing, walking backward, sideways, taking tiny or large steps, turning, jogging, hopping on one foot, jumping with both feet, galloping, skipping, and so on. (Skipping is developmental, and usually does not occur until about age 5, but it is important for children to see how it works.)
Combine different steps to make movement sentences, such as: four walks, four hops, turn around, sit down. Give your child these directions all at once - first just two directions, then three, then four. This activity will increase memory and concentration. They can make up patterns for you or one another, too.
Do movement games such as "Teddy Bear," that have directions to follow. Then make up your own verses, making rhymes for each two lines
Do movement games such as "Teddy Bear," that have directions to follow. Then make up your own verses, making rhymes for each two lines.
Dance to music, matching the steady beat with different parts of the body; for example: pat knees, tap shoulders, nod head, wiggle hips, and so on. Ability to keep the steady beat is closely linked to the ability to read, so any time you march, clap, pat, wave scarves, or play instruments with the steady beat, the child is building pre-reading skills.
Word experiences:
Say nursery rhymes; do finger plays. These activities carry the flow of the language, and children need to hear them many, many times to learn the language patterns. Say a poem using different character voices, for example: a tough guy, a news reporter, a shy person, a bear, a bird, happy, sad, proud, silly, serious, and so on.
Say one line of a rhyme; then have your child echo the words back. Repeat with other lines. Eventually, have the printed text available on a large chart, or make pictures to represent each line.
Use words to describe the images, sounds, and movements you or other children make. Use these words to create combinations and sequences.
When you encourage these open-ended types of activities in which there are no right answers, you help build the child's ability to cre patterns. The brain seeks pattern to learn. So developing creativity through the arts is not an option; it is essential. The arts open the door to learning for a lifetime.
About the author:
Dr. Sue Snyder is President of arts education IDEAS, an arts-based educational consulting and publishing company, devoted to excellence in educational experiences and materials for children and their parents and teachers. Contact arts education IDEAS at 5 Lancaster Drive; West Norwalk, CT: or Phone 203-229-0411; or see the website www.aeideas.com
