Personal and Community Health Consumer Health and Resource Management

Community and Public Health

14.1: By the end of grade 5, students will list the jobs carried out by people at school and in the community that support health and success in school.

14.2: By the end of grade 5, students will identify ways the physical environment is related to individual and community health.

Kindergarten Learning Experiences in The Arts

Introduction

Expression through the arts is a universal human behavior. Young children are naturally drawn to be creative, and they eagerly explore new methods through which they may express themselves. Children use the arts to explore sensations and to create or recreate imagined or real events. Through what they choose to dramatize, sing, or paint, children can express what is important, joyful, appealing, or frightening in their lives. Because the arts allow children to play with ideas and concepts, they often express in the arts ideas and understandings that do not emerge in other classroom work.

explore dance, music, theatre, and visual arts

express ideas and feelings through the arts

develop and sustain their natural curiosity and expressiveness

technique (methods of physical movement, tools and materials, and vocabulary)

creativity and expression, imagination and ideas

These elements must be merged for children to communicate (with themselves and others) effectively through the arts.

examining intensively both natural and manufactured object from many sources

expressing individual ideas and feelings through the use of various art media suited to the developmental level and expressive needs of children

experimenting in-depth with art materials and processes to determine effectiveness in creating new forms

working with tools appropriate to the child’s abilities and developing skills needed for satisfying aesthetic experiences

organizing, evaluating, and reorganizing works-in-process to gain an understanding of line, form, color, and texture in space

looking at, reading about, and discussing a variety of works of art

seeing artists produce art in a studio

evaluating art of both students and mature artists, as well as industrial products, home, and community design

engaging in activities that provide opportunities to apply art knowledge and aesthetics to judgment in personal life and in home or community planning

Before being formally introduced to any discipline, children should feel that it is “safe” to try new skills without concerns about “performance.” As children progress and gain confidence, teachers can begin to outline or model techniques at a developmentally appropriate level, allowing time for children to practice and refine the skills they are learning.

Art can be defined as the use of a variety of media and tools to create works that express ideas and imagination—each child (and each teacher) creates and expresses his/her own meaning. Activities such as connect-the-dots, coloring pages, cutting along pre-drawn lines, or pasting pre-cut shapes have some value in allowing children to demonstrate concepts or skills, but these activities are not art even though children are using art materials.

Meaningful art activities communicate the message that original expression is valued. While art does support cognitive and academic learning, the primary purpose of the arts is to foster creative expression and imagination, and to help children interpret and represent their thinking and their world in a variety of ways. When adults question a child’s work (e.g., “Did you ever see a tree with blue leaves?”, “That’s good but…,” “What is it?”), spontaneity can be undermined. Emphasize the process and meaning of creation and the expression of ideas, rather than the replication of steps, tones, colors, or forms. Some programs (the Reggio Emilia curriculum in particular) have demonstrated that young children are able to learn more advanced techniques in the visual arts than is commonly expected.

creating open-ended opportunities for the creation of art that encourage originality over conformity

providing children with appropriate space, materials and sufficient time to experiment with their arts projects (e.g., extended time for practice, opportunities to perform)

making accommodations for children’s individual abilities and needs

recognizing that not all young children want to, or are ready to, articulate some ideas
Expressiveness and individuality of art may also be drawn out with individual children and small groups with probes or prompts such as “All of you had the same materials—why did using the same materials end up looking different?” or “Tell me about your painting (or dance or music).” The arts section of the Guidelines for Preschool Learning Experiences includes activities that may be helpful for some children.
Physical Environment

Teachers should ensure that the physical environment for expression of the arts is safe for the children (e.g., appropriately supervised, free from dangerous objects or slippery surfaces). Additionally, teachers can involve children in developing rules and responsibilities related to time spent in arts education, and can illustrate for them how to show respect in the care of materials.

Photographs or videotapes of children engaged in theatre arts, music, or movement and dance can document process, discovery, and outcomes. Visual artwork can be shared with the school and the larger community through displays such as a classroom “gallery” or a library display that exhibits children’s artwork. Document what children say or write about their artwork, photos, dramatizations, and dances. Teachers may also use the arts to reach out to and involve families in meaningful way.

The arts offer many opportunities to integrate curriculum across subject areas. A classroom “word wall” can include vocabulary for all areas of the arts (e.g., dance and music tools/techniques, theatre terminology, visual arts materials/media). Books that include examples of different techniques and materials used in the arts can be made available. Children can talk about the science of materials (e.g., “Where does paper come from?”, “What are crayons made from?”). Technology/engineering concepts can be linked to visual art by studying, experiencing, and talking about architecture, the construction of buildings, or mapping out the interior of a building. There are many opportunities to link dance and music to mathematics (e.g., patterns, counting) and science (e.g., inquiry —“What materials around us could be used to sound out a rhythm?”).

The following pages illustrate how the learning standards of the Massachusetts Arts Curriculum Framework may be implemented in a kindergarten classroom.

The Framework provides learning standards in the following four disciplines:

Dance

Music

Visual Arts

A separate Arts Connections section in the Framework includes learning standards that define how students may investigate the historical and cultural contexts of the arts, the ways that the arts occur in their communities, and the ways in which the arts may help them as they study other disciplines.
Learning standards define what students know and should be able to do in certain grade ranges. Kindergarten expectations are included in the standards for pre-kindergarten through grade 4 (PreK-4). The majority of PreK-4 standards have been included in this chapter; omitted standards are listed below. Learning standards are directly quoted in this chapter; some are followed by separate, kindergarten-level interpretations.
Excluded Learning Standards

The following standards were considered less appropriate or relevant to children in kindergarten and were omitted from this chapter (see Omitted and Combined Standards in chapter 1 for additional explanation):

Learning standards and suggested activities are organized in the next section of this chapter as follows: