Writing activities are an essential part of quality literacy practices in early care and education settings. As children communicate through writing, they learn important concepts about books and other forms of print in the world around them, including writing and alphabet systems. Young children best understand and appreciate writing when it is…

The teaching of science demands the regular use of diagrams and sketches which may be formal or informal. This document outlines some basic guidelines, principles, and suggestions for preparing these diagrams. Topics covered include: basic drawing, shapes, lines and angles, contrast and shading, and lettering. (JRH)

Through a review of the literature on art therapy, a discussion of the strengths and limitations of the arts and art therapy for young children, and a survey of various techniques and uses of art therapy, this paper examines how children translate their perceptual world into their drawings. The paper notes that art therapy is, primarily, a means…

Previous literature on children's visual pattern perception has suggested that preschool children may process hierarchical forms in a manner different from that of older children and adults. Data from some studies suggested that children are holistic processors of pattern information, while other studies characterized children as piecemeal…

A study was conducted to examine the interrelationships between drawing, early writing, and the context of talk in which both phenomena occur. Participant observation methodology was used in a self-contained public school kindergarten in order to gather daily data during a 3-month period. Specifically, children freely drew and wrote in an…

Adult students enrolled in day and evening drawing classes can be introduced to two-dimensional composition through an exercise that combines the thumbnail sketch and the big-to-small principle. The exercise is composed of five steps and simple self-evaluation criteria that help students determine whether they understood and achieved the steps.…

In this study, visual representations and childhood egocentricity were explored to see how young children found their simple representations adequate and sufficient at one time and then progressively increased their own demands for comprehensibility, accommodating to the perspective of the viewer. (Author)

The article discusses outdoor drawing, giving a brief history and its applications in today's classrooms. The use of grids to help students gain an eye for proportions and spatial relationships is emphasized. (KM)

The major works of the child/developmental psychologist and educator Wayne Dennis are listed in this annotated bibliography. (One-hundred-twenty-one citations are included.) For ease of use, the bibliography has been subdivided into the major headings of aging (7 citations); animistic thinking (9 citations); cross-cultural studies (8 citations);…

IN TWO ART LEARNING EXPERIMENTS, COLLEGE UNDERGRADUATES MADE SEQUENTIAL DRAWINGS, WORKING ALONE IN A STUDIO FOR ONE HOUR A WEEK, WITH STANDARDIZED DRAWING MATERIALS. A HIDDEN CAMERA TOOK TIME LAPSE PHOTOS OF EACH DRAWING. HALF THE TIME THERE WAS A STILL LIFE AS THE DRAWING STIMULUS, THE OTHER HALF NO STIMULUS. DEPENDENT VARIABLES WERE CHANGES…

This guide in Spanish for the foreign language teacher suggests that more emphasis be placed on theater and art in the second language classroom. Easy methods for creating functional and attractive visual aids for the classroom are described. This guide for elementary school teachers describes: (1) easy theatrical techniques that can be used daily…

This study focuses on children's reflectiveness about their drawings, and on the effect of other children's presence on the drawer's verbalizations about the drawing process and product. It was hypothesized that children would talk more about their representational efforts in the presence of other children, and that planning and evaluative or…

This publication contains a conversation about art and drawing between a university professor of arts and a former director of a public school cultural arts program. As part of the National Humanities Faculty Why Series, the book is intended to help students, teachers, and citizens maintain and improve their intellectual vigor and human awareness…

GRADES OR AGES: K-12. SUBJECT MATTER: Creative art. ORGANIZATION AND PHYSICAL APPEARANCE: The guide has the following main sections--an introduction to art education, elementary art programs, junior high art program, senior high art program, appendixes (supplies and equipment, audio-visual materials, exhibits, book and periodicals, and glossary).…