Why are the visual and media arts important in early childhood school curricula?

In this paper I am going to discuss how creative activities constitute an important feature in
early childhood education. Experimenting with materials and visual art forms has numerous
benefits to the development of toddlers, starting from the improvement of their fine motor skills
and the ability to self-express, to the development of problem-solving and the improvement of
their communication skills. However, the exploration of art and creativity can have a much bigger
impact than this: it can aid in the building of higher order thinking skills, it brings a shift from
passively consuming art to being a creator, and it has a role in children's sense of cultural
belonging.https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/the_art_of_creating_why_art_is_important_for_early
_childhood_development

To provide a brief definition of terms, higher order thinking skills indicate the range of
critical thinking skills that differ from lower order outcomes (such as rote learning) because they
require more cognitive activities and processes. Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification system
utilised for educational learning outcomes within the higher order thinking. It consists of a set of
six levels of cognition distinguished on the basis of complexity, and encouraging the acquisition
higher forms of thinking skills rather than the bare memorization of facts and notions. The top
three levels of Bloom's Taxonomy are Analysis, Evaluation and Creation.
https://www.thoughtco.com/higher-order-thinking-skills-hots-education-3111297#:~:text=Bloom's
%20taxonomy%20was%20designed%20with,analysis%2C%20synthesis%2C%20and
%20evaluation.&text=The%20lower%2Dorder%20thinking%20skills,understanding%20and
%20applying%20that%20knowledge. When we pair these concepts with art experiences in the
early childhood, one can easily see how the many facets of creativity, especially in the visual arts
and media, have a great educational value. Cognitive development starts happening in the
moment when children begin to engage in any form of visual or media art – for instance, they will
learn cause-effect concepts as soon as they bring a crayon onto a paper, understanding how higher
pressure corresponds to darker lines.
Activities like 'play and draw' encourage children to observe their surroundings during play and to
use their imagination, and this inevitably stimulates their thiking processes, bringing attention to
the environment where they were playing to be able to integrate their observations within the
drawings. In Bloom's taxonomy of higher order thinking, these activities relate to the Analysis level,
where the identification and analysis of their own knowledge starts to take place, as well as the
comprehension of the difference between facts and opinions. To support the learning of these
skills, a carefully planned curriculum should involve activities that aim to the building of visual
sensitivity. An example would be to ask children to verbalise thoughts and ideas rich with details
and subsequently represent them in a drawing or in a painting. This way they would pay attention
to particulars that would not emerge in a spontaneous or free drawing session and they would
think of ways to represent them in a pictorial form. Goes without saying that the focus here is on
the process rather than the final result. Another aspect of art activities that deserves consideration
is one that stimulates the next stage of the Bloom's taxonomy of higher order thinking, the level of
Evaluation, and is the focus on tools, materials and resources. When children are able to fully
comprehend the potential of the resources they have available to create, they start thinking in a
critical way, gauging what of the materials is best used for what purpose, how to make the most of
the space they have for creation or what colours are the ones to combine together to attain a
certain shade, and being able to motivate their choices. For instance, when asked to create three-
dimensional forms, they will learn and evaluate what between paint and clay is the best material
to use, and that in order to obtain an accurate real-life shape, they will need to consider different
perspectives and points of view. The third level of Bloom's taxonomy is the Creation. This stage
consists of putting together various pieces of information that were previously learend and stored,
in order to build a whole. The holistic capacity of art is embedded in this level of learning, when
children are able to draw from different sources and create a unique structure. Creation happens
when children are given a varied array of materials and tools and are asked to produce a
representation of a story, for example. The children will utilise information they had stored such as
the potential and the characteristics of the materials, the organisation of spaces, the properties of
colours and so on, integrating them with the information that is relevant to the storyline and to the
characters. This is the phase of generation, planning and production which, according to the
taxonomy in question, is at the top of the cognitive
process.https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Art-and-art-in-Early-Childhood%3A-What-Can-
Young-from-Kindler/7de8adb94524e927daaa33e73d3cdf10bbcf4543
The development of higer order thinking skills is recognisable, as mentioned above, when
we bring our on the process of creation rather than on the final product. This is also the moment
when children become the creators of art instead of being mere observers and consumers of it. A
child who is a creator of art is a child who investigates, experiments and transforms the unknown,
translating his or her inner world of imagination and feelings into an external world of what has
been seen and observed. This is particularly evident in the earliest years, before verbal language is
developed, when children use art as a form of communication that takes place with the use of
hands, eyes and mind. https://books.google.it/books?
hl=it&lr=&id=nth1AwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=children+as+artists+&ots=Be-
2tXx2PV&sig=60ZxKeLenX-hnXgw5toQU-tV2go&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=children%20as
%20artists&f=false In fact, it is no coincidence that one of the most relevant approaches to young
children education in Western societies, the Reggio Emila approach, recognises art as a language
and considers the integration of art media to the curriculum as paramount for the cognitive and
symbolic expression of kids. Artistic expression in youngsters happens through spontaneous
behaviours and this is why it is free of censure and allows the natural engagement with learning
while experimenting, researching and designing. https://research-
repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/handle/10072/34998/65037_1.pdf?sequence=1 So while it is
important for children to come in contact with art, observing it and understanding its quality and
the significance it has in culture (discipline-based approaches are still widely used), it is even more
important to provide them with the opportunity to practice and create, to give them room for self-
expression and for development, testing out their potential and enhancing their well-being.
https://slks.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/0_SLKS/Dokumenter/Boern_og_unge/Publikationer/4__Su
mmary.pdf
It was observed that creating art impacts positively the achievement of learning outcomes in many
ways, and builds behaviours and attitudes that will aid later education stages. Some of these
beneficial influences are physical development, social interaction, cognitive development,
expressive qualities, imagination, creativity and sperimentation, and problem-solving skills. The
risk of not including art activities in learninng programs and only allowing contact with art in a
passive way is to provide a non holistic approach – often called deficit education. The reason is that
art based activities and practices help children understanding their surrounding environment
through the use of symbols, signs and different forms of representation. When this does not
happen, kids will have to make more efforts to attain such understanding.
Besides from this more formal viewpoint of the impact that art practices have on children's
development, the role of a child as a producre of art is to be considered for its most literal
meaning: what is produced as a mere representation of an image, thought, feeling of idea, nicely
arranged, can often result in the creation of something close to a of work of art.
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1150970.pdf
The playfulness that is inherent to art makes it an experience that many kids are naturally drawn
to, and their dynamism and freedom from judgment (and self-judgment) give them a type of
flexibility in the use they make of tools, materials and forms, which further enhances the
expression and unfolding of their own creativity. https://books.google.it/books?
hl=it&lr=&id=nth1AwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=children+as+artists+&ots=Be-
2tXx2PV&sig=60ZxKeLenX-hnXgw5toQU-tV2go&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=children%20as
%20artists&f=false
Besides their own expression, visual forms of art are amongst children a way to build
awareness around the expression of others and to identify their place in group activities and, in a
broader sense, their place in cultural groups. This happens through observation and the
consequent acknowledgement of the way they express their environment artistically (colours,
shapes, arrangements).https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED443575.pdf
This is especially fundamental when related to the concept of 'belonging'. The Early Years Learning
Framework indicates that Belonging is one out of three critical aspects of a child's life – with the
others being Becoming and Being. The concept is essential to the human existance, and being able
to identify where and with whom a child and his or her family belong provides the foundations to
relationships with others and with the definition of identities of self and of others.
https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/belonging_being_and_becoming_the_early
_years_learning_framework_for_australia_0.pdf
Art plays a particularly important role in the development of children's sense of belonging. The
introduction of toddlers to artistic activities and art in the more general sense provides
opportunities for experiences that feel personal and meaningful, and guiding a child towards the
recognition of the heritage behind visual forms of art he or she is exposed to, helps them with the
identification with a particular culture or group – in a way, it helps them to judge and analyse the
environment they live in. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341292240_Review-
Chapman_Approches_to_ArtED Nowadays the exposure to visual art happens daily in a great
variety of ways (books, TV, magazines, print media, photography) and because of this sort of
oversupply, a point that should not be underrated is the need to provide children with an
education (from teachers and from families) that focusses on understanding different types of art
in relation to different types of heritages and cultures. It is opportune to specify that whilst what is
broadly meany by 'artistic heritage' relates to a rather formal knowledge of art and the work of
artists, and therefore to matters that could not be taught in early childhood settings but would be
more appropriate for older students, it is still possible to integrate the development of the sense of
cultural belonging in prescholers by creating connections between their art activities and products
and their own cultural heritage. Referring back to the notion of children as producers of art, it is
their own production that supports the learning of art's depths, even from a culture-centred point
of view. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED443575.pdf

To conclude, art education and the encouragement of creativity in the early years are
strictly connected to the development of some of the most relevant aspects of life and the
attainment of learning outcomes. Incorporating art in early childhood curricula supports an
education that is whole and the achievement of these outcomes in a holistic way. The power
artistry has to foster exploration, discovery and play is paramount for children's self-expression and
cognitive activity. Higher Order Thinking skills are developed through artistic and creative activities
where kids can experiment and build skills like problem-solving, and independent judgment, they
are prompted to create connections and to create using previously stored information. Through a
more pragmatic and practical art infused education, youngsters becomes producers of art
themselves, with numerous benefits that bring positive impacts to their physical, social and
imaginary development. Finally, being exposed to art since the earlierst years provides a significant
foundation to the building of the sense of Belonging, paramount for the engagement with others
and the environment children are surrounded by.

Camilla Minniti