Encouraging Your Budding Artist
In a child’s life the first three years are so important! As your child begins discovering the world around him, help explore his blossoming creativity with these fun and simple projects. Welcome to the scribbling stage
Is your child a budding young artist? Take advantage of that creative energy and feed your child’s burning desire with some easy and fun art projects. Help to encourage your little ones’ creativity to soar!
Curiosity creates the arts
Would you like your child to draw more than stick figures? Then maybe it’s time to move on to elementary drawing, painting and modeling. Have fun with paint, crayons and clay while your kids create their own masterpieces. (more…)
For kids to have more fun when looking at artwok, ask them the following questions:
1) Pick one piece of artwork and study it carefully.
Name of the Artist?
What is the Title of the Artwork?
What would you have called this painting if you had done it?
2) Describe the objects or people that you see in the artwork?
Do objects or people fill up the space?
Is there a lot of space in between or around?
3) What type of shapes do you see? (Are they circles, oval, squares, rectangles or triangles?)
4) What type of lines do you see? (Are they wavy, straight, thin, thick, broken, jagged, vertical or horizontal lines?) (more…)
Ever try to force a cat to sit in your lap? It never works and the experience is usually not good for the lap or the cat.
The same is true of kids and art. You can’t force a child to develop artistically but you can encourage their natural interests by gently guiding then to the next level and allowing them to take the next step — if that’s what they want to do.
In almost any medium of childhood play there are natural paths leading to one or more of the arts. Kids don’t leap from play dough to museum quality pottery in a single bound — but they can make the journey if you act as guide and mentor.
Plunking away on the keyboard of a toy piano may lead to Carnegie Hall and a lifelong love of music — if there is natural talent and interest. It could just as easily result in a kid who has the ability to make any piano — baby grand or upright sound like a $3.98 toy piano.
Natural Progression
Your role in your child’s natural artistic progression is that of teacher and mentor – but not art critique 
You can help your children progress to the next level by introducing new techniques and mediums for expression when you sense they are ready to take the next step. A few words of encouragement can work wonders. Introduce a new technique or medium by sitting down with them and showing a few tricks and techniques to get them started. If in doubt, seek the advice of local art teachers. They will be glad to offer suggestions.
In drawing or painting children typically progress from scribbling lines on paper with a crayon to simple stick figures to filling in the details, and finally to more lifelike drawings using perspective and shading.
For example: Lollypop trees (circles on sticks) are great for young kids but look a little silly when drawn by older children. Turning lollypops into “real” trees requires branches – and most kids don’t draw branches because they don’t know how. Show them. Forget the leaves and just draw trees with branches. THEN add the leaves. Whatever age of the artist, the resulting image will look more like a tree than a lollypop
Sample Progression Paths:
Three Dimensional Art
Play dough > Modeling Clay > Modeling Compounds > Real Clay Ceramics / Pottery > etc.
Two Dimensional Art:
Crayons > Finger paints > Poster Paints > Water Colors > Felt-tip markers > Pen and Ink > Oil Painting > etc.
by Dennis Randall
http://school.familyeducation.com/music/intelligence/37706.html
Free Arts & Crafts Activities & Ideas & Coloring Pages and Printables Directory for Kids, Teens, & Preschoolers
Draw and Paint, Free Art Classes, Kid's Art ClassesCHANGES TO ARTISTS HELPING CHILDREN – PLEASE READ
Artists Helping Children is No Longer Acting as a Nonprofit Due to the New Provisions of The Pension Protection Act of 2006 Passed on August 03, 2006. We Are No Longer Accepting Donations of Any Kind. We are Currently Keeping This Site Up As Is and Will Continue to Post Information on Any Updates to the Status of Artists Helping Children. The Site Still Has a Wealth of Information and Can Still Be Used as Such. (more…)
Why do the arts make such a difference in how students learn and perceive the world?
Part of the answer is biological. Researchers Shaw and Rauscher believe music stimulation actually forms new and permanent connections in children’s brains. San Francisco neurologist Frank R. Wilson “has demonstrated a correlation between music study and muscular development, physical coordination, sense of timing, mental concentration, the ability to hold up under stress, memory skills, and vocal, visual, and aural development,” the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports. Wilson points out that 90 percent of the cerebellum is devoted to the precise hand-arm movements necessary for playing a musical instrument.
In the Arts Education Policy Review (July 17, 1998), Shaw and other researchers write, “Recent studies have demonstrated that sophisticated cognitive abilities are present in children as young as five months. Similarly, musical abilities are evident in infants and neonates. Music then may serve as a ‘pre-language’ (with centers distinct from language centers in the cortex), available at an early age, which can access inherent cortical spatial-temporal firing patterns and enhance the cortex’s ability to accomplish pattern development.”
Even without the neurological evidence, educators know that different children learn differently, and that the arts can be a way to enhance creativity in high academic achievers and stimulate the learning process in children who otherwise might be left behind.
In 1983, Harvard University Professor Howard Gardner introduced the now widely-accepted theory of “multiple intelligences.” Gardner says there are at least eight forms of intelligences: language, logic, musical, spatial, bodily, naturalist, interpersonal and intrapersonal. “A good educational system ought to nourish and nurture the range of intelligences, which include several featured in the arts,” Gardner recently said. “Otherwise, we will be neglecting important forms of human potential and stunting the cognitive development of youngsters.” All youngsters, he argues, should be exposed to such important creators as Rembrandt and Picasso, Mozart and Duke Ellington, Shakespeare and Toni Morrison. He also favors encouraging each child to master a single art form well enough to be able to create with it–not only as a means of creation, but as a way of learning about the world.
Indeed, arts education is not only important psychologically and neurologically, but culturally as well. Alexandra York, president of the American Renaissance for the Twenty-First Century, contends that fine arts training can “help children develop emotional and moral sensibilities and the discipline that goes with mastering a craft.” Her organization wants to make fine arts a mandatory part of every school’s core curriculum. ” Art education is not a luxury, it is a spiritual necessity,” she said, quoted in recent Indianapolis Star editorial supporting arts spending. “At its apotheosis–aesthetically, philosophically and psychologically–art provides a spiritual summation by integrating mind and matter. Thus it is the very souls of our emotionally abandoned, value-starved youth that we can rescue through art education–one at a time.”
Despite the importance of the arts to learning, arts education has experienced debilitating cuts over the past two decades. As many as one-third of the nation’s public school music programs have been dropped, and many more programs throughout the country remain in jeopardy. For example, in Milwaukee, budget cuts mean that “many students in the city’s public schools reach their teen years without ever having touched a musical instrument or paintbrush,” according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Even as the economy has rebounded, increased demand for smaller class sizes and computers have prevented the full recovery of arts education.
Yet, the nation is experiencing signs of a fragile renewal of arts education–one that could dissipate without additional public and private support.
Article Submitted by Scribbles Kids Art – Please Visit http://www.scribbleskidsart.com/
While many supporters of the arts correctly believe that music, painting, sculpture, theater and other arts should be provided for their own sake, the new research reveals what many educators had known intuitively for years. Exposure to the arts help students build self-confidence, express their creativity, and perform better in math and reading.
·In 1997, the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies published the results of a national arts study that showed a positive relationship between standardized test scores, English grades, and other educational methods. The study revealed that students in eighth and 10th grade who had “high involvement” in the arts, in and out of class, consistently outscored those with low exposure to the arts. Students with high arts exposure were also less likely to drop out of school.
·University of California at Irvine researchers discovered, in a study beginning in 1993, that students who took piano lessons scored an average of 34 percent higher on tests of spatial-temporal ability, which educators consider a vital skill for understanding math and science. After only six months of playing the piano, three- to five-year-olds showed dramatic improvement in spatial reasoning tests. (more…)
by Richard Louv
“Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education, and children should be taught music before anything else.”
–Plato
” Art education is not a luxury, it is a spiritual necessity.”
–Alexandra York, American Renaissance for the Twenty-First Century
The notice comes home in the backpack. Polite, low-keyed, and easy to miss, the notice says that, due to district budget cuts, your child’s school is cutting the art class. Or music. Or theater.
Reading the notice, you might shrug your shoulders: In the back-to-basics era, and with all the news about American students lagging behind technologically, the school must make more time for reading, math, and science. Art is a luxury we may not be able to afford for our kids, right? Wrong.
Remember how Johnny’s math scores soared when he learned how to read music to play the guitar? Or how Sally’s self-confidence went through the roof when she won that part in the class play?
Across the country, artists and anthropologists, educators and children’s advocates, parents and corporate leaders, are speaking out about the importance of the arts to child and youth development. Recently publicized brain research has taught us that kids learn earlier than we expected; now, a new round of research shows us that the visual and performing arts play an essential role in how children learn to read, write, and do mathematics. Even if a child’s drawing of a summer vacation never hangs anywhere more prominent than a refrigerator door, that act of creation can unlock a young mind in ways that scientists and educators are only now beginning to understand. (more…)
School arts classes matter more than ever – but not for the reasons you think
By Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland
Why do we teach the arts in schools?
In an educational system strapped for money and increasingly ruled by standardized tests, arts courses can seem almost a needless extravagance, and the arts are being cut back at schools across the country.
One justification for keeping the arts has now become almost a mantra for parents, arts teachers, and even politicians: arts make you smarter. The notion that arts classes improve children’s scores on the SAT, the MCAS, and other tests is practically gospel among arts-advocacy groups. A Gallup poll last year found that 80 percent of Americans believed that learning a musical instrument would improve math and science skills.
But that claim turns out to be unfounded. It’s true that students involved in the arts do better in school and on their SATs than those who are not involved. However, correlation isn’t causation, and an analysis we did several years ago showed no evidence that arts training actually causes scores to rise.
(more…)
The importance of art education for our children has never been so undermined as in today’s turbulent economy. Today’s global economic condition has prompted cutbacks, privately and publicly, and one of the most noticeable cut backs is in the arts in education, they are doing away with everything from music, visual arts to drama. Yet, did you know that studies done by top institutions on the arts show that involvement in “the arts” result in a student out performing the other students by virtually every measure. These are conclusive facts not fabrications or estimates. Also the arts even the playing field for those students that are less fortunate. Did you know that students that are involved in the arts have: 25% higher creativity, 14% higher fluency, 16% higher originality, 30% higher elaboration, 19% higher resistance to quitting or giving up, 28% higher expression, 26% higher risk taking and 27% higher imagination.
Now when all of these 8 categories are combined it gives a student 23.125% higher thinking capacity. This is why they would out perform other students by virtually every measure. Art is a smart and fun investment that everyone young and old deserves and guarantees a return.
Give yourself, your teen or your child the opportunity to draw and paint beautifully at Mission: Renaissance, The World’s Leader in Fine Art Instruction.
Benefits of art as concluded by the:
Champions of Change, The impact of the arts on learning
Edited by: Edward B. Fiske
Funded by:
The GE Fund & The John D. and Catherine T. Macarthur Foundation
When Mission: Renaissance first began in Hollywood mid 1975 it immediately began turning out talented artists well grounded on the basics of fine art, a front group for the basics the masters used to train their apprentices centuries ago. Founded in this traditional method, long forgotten by most educational institutions, Larry’s teaching activity garnished instant success and began to provide him and others with their dream job. Larry knew that anyone, if taught the skills correctly could learn, even without innate abilities, as long as they had the desire. Simply put anyone could learn to draw and paint beautifully regardless of prerequisite, past experience or lack there of. The biggest hurdle would be to overcome “The Talent Myth” that insidious belief that will crush the hopes of those who want or always wanted to draw and paint. This myth is what stops most from answering their call to creativity, they have been sucked into believing “I can’t draw a straight line,” or “I have no talent,” and because of this horror, they will never even try. If you would like to learn more about this artistic crippling myth visit http://www.LarryGluck.com. and read more about this malevolent theory that is so entrenched in society.
Art improves skills. Skills which are applicable to all subjects in one’s life. For example, studies have shown that in school art improves student understanding and grade point averages. Artistic and creative skills can be applied to improve study skills and life. Testimonials from students, young and old, extol positive changes in their lives when they pursued their interest in art. Moreover, in a specific vocation or a job, you can apply these art skills, such as: one adult student, a well-known reconstructive/cosmetic surgeon, who applies many of the principles he learned in class to the shaping of the human face. He admitted that this tech training made his job easier and helped him perfect the symmetry in his patient’s facial appearance in surgery and he himself stated: “who would’ve thought that in pursuing a personal artistic interest you could have such a result.” What you learn in art can be applied to everything that you do.
Because of today’s global economic condition everyone is extra careful in how they spend their money, privately and publicly. One of the most noticeable cut backs is in arts education. State administrators are doing away with everything from visual arts to music, from drama to photography. Yet, the same studies noted above, conducted by top institutions on the arts show that involvement in “the arts” result in a student out performing the other students by virtually every measure. These are conclusive facts not fabrications or estimates. The arts even the playing field for those students that are less fortunate. Did you know that students that are involved in the arts have: 25% higher creativity, 14% higher fluency, 16% higher originality, 30% higher elaboration, 19% higher resistance to quitting or giving up, 28% higher expression, 26% higher risk taking and 27% higher imagination. When all of these 8 categories are combined it gives a student 23.125% higher thinking capacity. This is why they out perform other students by virtually every measure. This makes art a smart investment.
THE GLUCK METHOD® is a step-by-step process of fine art instruction developed over the course of a quarter century by world-renowned artist and educator Larry Gluck. This sequence of steps is composed of information, demonstrations, exercises and goal-oriented assignments precisely arranged in order to build artistic talent from the bottom up. When followed exactly as given, the entire sequence can furnish an individual with a life-long foundation as a fine artist and the ability to draw and paint beautifully. There is no shortage of so-called "art instruction." Thousands of art schools, art departments, art classes and working artists, worldwide, advertise they teach fine art. Hundreds and hundreds of books and videos are available on the subject. The Gluck Method differs in that it is the only complete method of fine art instruction that presents the full complement of underlying principles for drawing and painting. It is also the only method to provide students with a means of acquiring all the talent needed to create competent representational drawings and paintings. The Method transforms someone without natural talent into someone who has the skills to create beautiful works of art. In addition, it fills in any gaps in the knowledge or skills of naturally talented individuals or those who have trained elsewhere but without real success. Thousands of “would-be” artists have studied in art schools and college or university art departments for years, without having received any workable instruction. The idea that anyone can actually learn to draw and paint beautifully, regardless of whether or not they have any “talent,” has been thought impossible. The whole idea is so new that most people have to experience it to believe it. The Gluck Method has been used exclusively by the World’s Largest Fine Art Program, Mission: Renaissance®, where tens of thousands who were previously unable to draw or paint have brought their dreams to life and can now express themselves as artists. With 18 fine art studios in Southern California, Mission: Renaissance currently teaches more than 3000 students, young and old, each week. Now, for the first time, The Method is being made available to one and all. With The Gluck Method Fine Art Instruction Series anyone can learn to draw and paint in the privacy of their own home. The Method is like the yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz. A student needs only to follow it, and he or she will acquire the talents that lie behind the magical curtain of fine art.
