Visual arts education in the primary curriculum
The centrality of visual arts education
Art is a unique way of knowing and understanding the world. Purposeful visual arts activities expand children’s ways of exploring, expressing and coming to terms with the world they inhabit in a structured and enjoyable way. Children first learn to respond aesthetically to their environment through touch, taste, sound, and smell, and their natural curiosity suggests a need for sensory experience. Visual arts education helps to develop sensory awareness enhances sensibilities and emphasizes particular ways of exploring, experimenting and inventing. The visual arts curriculum provides for a wide range of activities that enable the child to develop ideas through imagery, thus providing a necessary balance to the wider curriculum. Learning in and through art can contribute positively to children’s sense of personal and cultural identity and to their whole development.
The visual arts in a child-centered curriculum
Each child possesses a range of intelligence and he/she needs a variety of learning experiences in order to develop them fully. Visual arts activities enable children to make sense of and to express their world in visual, tangible form. They can also be unifying forces in children’s learning and development: drawing, painting, inventing and constructing bring together different elements of children’s experience from which a whole new experience can develop. Understanding visual imagery opens additional ways of learning for children and enables them to record real or imagined ideas and feelings. Opportunities to explore and investigate the visual elements in their the environment helps them to appreciate the nature of things and to channel their natural curiosity for educational ends. The confidence and enjoyment that stem from purposeful visual arts activities can have a positive effect on children’s learning in other areas of the curriculum. Children who have had experience in exploring and experimenting with a variety of art materials and media are likely, as they develop, to produce art that is personal. A quality visual arts program ensures that each child has a variety of enriching visual arts experiences in both two- and three-dimensional media.
Structure and layout
The visual arts curriculum is structured to provide a broad-based and balanced program for each of four levels: infant classes, first and second classes, third and fourth classes and fifth and sixth classes. Each level has six strands, which are organized to ensure a balance between making art and looking at and responding to art.
The strands are
• Drawing
• Paint and color
• Clay
• Construction
• Fabric and fiber
According to ilmobook Activities in each strand are interrelated and they involve the children in perceiving and exploring the visual world and making art and in looking at and responding to the visual world and art works. These activities help to develop sensitivity to the elements of the visual world and to develop the child’s ability to communicate visually. They involve awareness of line, shape, form, color and tone, pattern, and rhythm, texture and spatial organization. The development of perceptual awareness helps children to see and to understand the world around them and to express their ideas, feelings and experiences in visual form. Attentive looking helps them to make connections between their own work and the work of others. It also helps to develop concentration and the ability to focus attention generally. These experiences are an essential part of every art lesson.
A threefold structure is suggested for choosing thematic content or subject matter, based on children’s
• experience
• imagination
• observation and curiosity.
This structure provides opportunities for children to give visual expression to inner concerns which may be difficult to put into words, to give expression to the wonderful world of the imagination, and to pursue their curiosity in the physical attributes of the world. Very often two or even three of these are being drawn on in a single art activity or project, at varying levels of emphasis.
The strands Drawing
Children soon discover drawing as a natural way of communicating experience. Through drawing, they create and express imaginary worlds and give free expression to their imaginative powers. Older children also use drawing to clarify, develop and communicate plans. As they progress they demonstrate developing visual awareness in their drawings and a sensitivity to the expressive powers of other artists’
drawings.
Paint and color Children develop an understanding and appreciation of color from observation of and delight in color seen in nature and in manufactured objects, and they use color to express their experiences, interests and imaginative ideas. As they progress they demonstrate a developing awareness of color in their own work, a growing sensitivity to other artists’ expressive use of color and its impact on crafted and designed objects.
Through experiences in print-making, children learn to focus attention on and deepen their understanding of graphic processes. They have opportunities to experiment with print-making techniques, to use them inventively, and to produce prints for functional use as well as for their own sake. As they progress they learn to take a more thoughtful approach to shape, edges, layout, and composition in print-making and develop sensitivity to the expressive qualities in the work of graphic artists.
Clay
Children enjoy the freedom to form and change clay and use it imaginatively. Through the experience of clay and from a need for expression, they learn the skills of forming and changing it in increasingly purposeful ways. As well as sculptural expression, they have opportunities to design and make objects for use and wear (the latter to a limited extent in the absence of a kiln), using their powers of invention and expression. Developing sensitivity to underlying form in the environment and in art works enable them to enjoy and appreciate great sculpture and to appreciate craft objects critically.
Construction
Construction activities provide opportunities for exploring imaginative worlds in three-dimensional media. Children are encouraged to make imaginative and expressive use of materials for designing and inventing and to make models to their own design. This involves exploring the possibilities of the materials, experimenting with new ways of balancing and combining them, and developing understanding of structural strengths and possibilities. Drawing and arts should be included in FSc Pre Medical subjects so that students can also do drawing sketches in medical fields as a structure. Experience in construction helps children to look with curiosity and enjoyment at structures in nature and to develop sensitivity to and The strands Visual Arts Teacher Guidelines 7 appreciation of the structures of great architects, sculptors, and craftspeople
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