Kindergarten and preschool and art are almost synonymous. Which kindergarten, preschool or any early childhood education classroom or home school program does not have some kind of art on a daily basis.

You may have seen my other blog called educational art thoughts where I present all kinds of educational art activities and thoughts about art for those interested in young children and their art. For the most part that would be early childhood teachers, school or home based and even art teachers.

My theories are called Educational Art and can be divided into three types of activities for  children. In this post I will discuss how you can bring educational art into a center based classroom using a Three Part Art approach.

In Educational Art, art can be divided into three parts.

1. Crafts (projects for holidays, special days, etc.)
2. Process only art activities (painting, clay, collage etc.)
3. The art center (daily challenges)

Many teachers who do use a center based curriculum where the children work independently at these centers during their work period use the art center mostly as a place to store their art supplies.

Many teachers feel they don’t really know HOW to use the art center as a truly thriving area that the kids can use independently without resorting to just using it as a place for structured activities.

The truth is you don’t need to do the crafts and process only activities in the art center. As long as you have table elsewhere in the classroom you can have all three of the three part art activities going on at the same time.

One table can host a crafts activity, another a process only art activity and third the table that is the real important one that is needed to run a good art center actually needs to be be either IN or NEAR the art center.

What should actually be going on in the art center?

Now I don’t know about you but when I was teaching I was always looking for more ideas for my centers to offer during the work period.

Adding a real art center certainly does add to their choices and benefits.

When you give the children the options available for that work period there can be

1-Collage with triangles on one table

2-Make a flag at the crafts table and

3- Go check out the art center.

So in the art center basic art supplies are stocked for the kids to use to make things that they may need for other centers like food for their dramatic play area or signs for their blocks

But the main thing that should be going in in the art center is daily challenges.

Every 2-3 days you should add something new in that area for the children to  be able to go over and experiment and create with the materials that are available that day without a specific creation in mind.

The children that love art will gravitate towards this center and the ones that are more scared of art may watch from a  distance and then join in at a later date.

Some ideas for challenges

• Add a hole puncher and string
• Put out different shapes papers
• Add some aluminum foil and  markers
• Wallpaper samples with pinked scissors
• Long rectangular papers and straws
• Remove scissors one day
• Folded papers
• Papers with some beginning lines on them and marks

These are just some basic ideas to start you off and help you come up with your own ideas to keep the art center fresh and exciting.

Once you get into the habit of including the different ideas and challenges that you are going to include in your art center, the children will be looking forward to seeing what is new in the art center and what can they create over there.

For homeschoolers

The same exact thing can be done in your home by utilizing a box that you can call a mystery box. The children can check  to see what is in their box that day they can create with. with kids at home they can even be part of adding things to the mystery box.

If you come up with some great innovations to add to your art center or mystery I’d love  to hear about ‘em.