Art Studio Community Room
Embracing the Possibilities of Art for Children
Students engaged in their artwork
Welcome to our Art Studio Community Room where we strive to foster meaningful experiences between young children and materials. Our emphasis is on the value of using materials and media to allow children to express and communicate feelings, thoughts, and understanding. We are striving to have our Art Studio be a place where art is a lively process of engagement with a range of materials where teachers are intentionally exploring and setting up new deliberate creative outlets and possibilities for our children not simply a spontaneous, open-ended messy exploration.
We would like children to investigate and create from things that they have sought out, discovered, and collected themselves. We know our children love going on adventures to find materials. Since recyclable materials surround us in the environment we have been working hard to make them a permanent part of unique creations by children. The materials we recycle here at school as well as the many wonderful items children have been bringing in to reuse from their home collections are serving as great resources. The shapes, colors, and textures in these discarded objects have allowed us and our children to create a bridge to visual and active learning. It is our hope that allowing children to be a part of the process right from the beginning as they collect, recycle and reuse, will allow them to be more thoughtful, focused and pleased with their efforts.
Students using the LightBox
Our Art Studio fosters our belief that children have a natural ability and openness to the potential of materials that interact with. The goal is that children become fluent with materials as if materials were a language. We intentionally place different materials in the Art Studio so that children will have exposure to them—such as our watercolor paper, liquid watercolors, model magic, wonder dough, colored sand and much more to help grow a culture of inquiry and investigation among our great materials.
Our team plans together to feed into children’s natural eye for design by displaying and setting up attractive designs of open-ended materials, objects from nature that have an array of textures, color, and shapes that can be used in their designs and constructions in the studio on our two special light tables, in natural baskets, or on neutral fabrics so they are drawn to the materials and it leads to many wonderful creations and fostering a climate of inquiry.
Students drawing at their easels
Children seem to have a strong sense of design. We love to see and hear children as they describe how they put together their designs. It makes us realize the complexity of their thinking and their many ways of making connections. Our new BIG hollow blocks that have really been a great outlet for children to be creative with building.
We would love for you to share any special art talents, new or old frames of varied sizes to display children’s work, canvases that could be used for paintings, ceramic materials, clay pots that could be reused or painted, or other items that would complement our goals in using natural materials and open-ended items for kids to explore.