Welcome to guest blogger Carrie Heflin! Carrie was a pre-k classroom educator at the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center for four years. With everyday access to the museums on the National Mall, she developed her students’ understanding of art concepts. Her teaching put attention on the connections between artwork and science concepts. She is now the Professional Development Coordinator for the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center and the Exhibit Coordinator for Wegmans Wonderplace at the National Museum of American History.

As early childhood educators, we are all familiar with the questions that weigh on parents’ and caregivers’ minds: How does my child’s development stack up to that of her or his peers? What should I be doing at home to help my child learn more, faster? What kind of school is best for my child?

Educators and school administrators constantly make difficult decisions regarding the quality and content of the educational experience they are able to provide for their students. We are aware that young children need sensory experiences and multiple exposures to materials to ensure that they are properly able to learn new skills and remember information. Adding more Arts-based programming into the curriculum is a logical way to accomplish these goals because art comes naturally in many forms such as painting, sculpture, literature, theater and music.

These media can engage various senses and reinforce ideas both through their more passive interactions, such as watching a play or looking at a painting, and through hands-on creation. However, the Arts are often under-utilized in school settings because proper training on their cross-curricular use is not made available to educators and funding for such trainings and programs is lacking. Many people also consider the Arts to be an intimidating field. They understandably feel ill equipped to teach using subject matters with which they are not familiar. There are some simple tips one can follow to start thinking about and using the Arts more in the classroom- regardless of subject matter or grade level.

First, start looking for connections. Time and again we are asked to weed out any subject whose contribution toward success cannot be weighed and measured in neat letters and numbers and to cast it aside. However, as any early childhood educator can tell you without hesitation, one area of learning and development cannot be separated from another. You cannot ask whether music is more important than math because music is math. Each note represents a fraction of a measure. Each bar is the sum of its notes. Science cannot be separated from art. Every building or monument on this planet is equal parts a testament to its architect’s engineering skills and her or his creativity. Literature cannot be separated from its dramatic representation in the theater because words are meaningless unless there are people sharing them with each other.

Ernesto Neto, “The Dangerous Logic of Wooing,” 2002. Installation view of “At the Hub of Things: New Views of the Collection” at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, 2014. Photo: Cathy Carver

Second, apply the connections between broader subject matters to specific pieces of works of art. With very little prompting, even a young child can look at a work of contemporary art like Ernesto Neto’s The Dangerous Logic of Wooing and make the connection between a massive sculptural installation and the principles of physics. I have seen it happen through my work as an educator at the Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center (SEEC). My pre-k class went to see this piece by Neto and talked about how the way the sculpture is suspended from the ceiling is a good visual representation of the pull of gravity. I showed my class images of astronauts in space who are floating around and talked about how gravity is the force that keeps us from floating around here on earth. We don’t usually notice it, but it can be seen in the way big objects, like this sculpture, hang down when they are suspended. The curator of this museum exhibition and the artist who created the piece had to work together to develop a system for hanging it that would be strong enough to hold up the massive artwork against the force of gravity that is pulling on it.

Then we thought about how the force of gravity affects the way our own bodies move around. We performed the basic motions of raising our arms and lifting our feet and talked about how our muscles and bones have to work against gravity just to allow us to move around. In a later lesson about muscles, we applied our experience of the force of gravity to talk about why we have to exercise and strengthen our muscles in order to perform harder tasks such as running fast or lifting heavy objects. Months later, I heard pieces of my lessons being incorporated into play scenarios where my students were talking about making their leg muscles stronger by doing a lot of running.

Sol LeWitt “Four-Sided Pyramid”, 1999, first installation 1997 National Gallery of Art, Washington Gift of the Donald Fisher Family. Photograph of artwork taken by Slowking4.

Creating art is also an excellent way to introduce concepts of physics and engineering. When my class was learning about ancient Egypt, we went to see Sol Lewitt’s Four-Sided Pyramid at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden to encourage thinking about how the various pyramids of ancient Egypt were built. We brought plastic Lego blocks along to demonstrate some possible shapes that wouldn’t work with the building materials on hand. For instance, the children figured out very quickly that the base of the structure needed to be larger than, or at least equal to, the size of the top or it would tip over. Then we tried to create a pyramid model, working from the design of the sculpture and images of the Great Pyramids. Individual children were able to use the Lego blocks to create an object that closely resembled the sculpture, but we were unable to make a smooth-sided pyramid. The class concluded that we either, didn’t have enough blocks, or didn’t have the right kind of blocks. This kind of hands-on problem solving, inspired by a sculpture, created a lasting impression on my class. It has been over two years since our first lesson and one student still regularly teaches lessons on Egypt to his family when they come to the museums.

This is just a small example of what the Arts can add to a classroom experience. If you don’t have access to a museum or gallery on a regular basis, use technology. Th
ere are countless images available online that can help bring art to you and your students. Be creative, look for connections between art and science concepts, and remember: Art, in all its many forms, is the human representation of knowledge that gives it meaning. When we take away that meaning, we aren’t setting our children up for success. We are setting them adrift in a sea of numbers and letters without context or purpose.