Creative arts incorporates activities in which young children actively participate in involving their imaginations through puppetry, art, drama, dance and music resulting in the enhancement of child learning and development. When applied in early childhood education these activities engage children across all domains from physical, social, emotional, cognitive and language, hence facilitating the learning and development of the young children in all aspects as they grow. In Australia, The Early Years Learning Framework incorporates creative arts in defining curriculum as planned or unplanned interactions, routines and events, experiences and activities that take place around an environment where young children undergo learning and development.
Theories exist that explain how creative arts aid in the educational development of children during early learning and their educators’ role throughout the process with various philosophies incorporated during the learning process. This paper intends to elaborate on the importance of creative arts in education during early childhood, how the various forms of art can be incorporated to aid learning in different aspects of the curriculum and the roles played by the educators throughout the whole process in early education as well as determining how they relate to the Early Years Learning Framework.
Importance of Creative Arts
Learning that involves play (creative arts) is one of the very important practices stated in the Early Years Learning Framework. Creative arts activities help in the stimulation and cultivation of the abilities of children to learn in mental, physical and emotional aspects. Drama, for instance, develops self-regulation, language, social competence and cognition of young children as their thinking abilities are expanded and mastery promoted. Research has found that play, through creative arts, during the early years on a child, prepares them for future learning (Essa 36). The activities help in the creation of an interesting and fun environment as per the Early Years Learning Framework that maximizes the development of children. Friedrich Froebel’s philosophy that the highest expression of early childhood development involves plays, for through it a child freely expresses what is in their soul and his earlier experiment on early childhood learning in Kindergartens through his application of gifts such as play materials and activities indicated the importance of creative arts in teaching young children (Nutbrown and Clough 31).
Importance on Physical Development
Physically, when a child undertakes creative arts activities such as using a paintbrush, gluing buttons, and yarning on paper, they engage and advance their fine motor skills. More intense activities such as dancing, jumping and skipping helps children in stimulating their brain making them able to control their gross motor skills. These activities shape children physically in ways that would later become very critical in their adulthood. During activities such as painting, a child without fully developed fine motor skills is able to mimic a fellow with fully developed fine motor skills. This way, the children learn to develop better control of their bodies (Koster 148). The general physical strength also massively improves as a result of children’s participation in creative arts as they learn how to coordinate their hand and their eyes, achieving physical development through a creative, fun and relaxed manner.
Importance in Emotional and Mental Development
Emotionally, activities involving creative arts facilitate children's exploration and control of their emotions and assist them to learn how they would later be able to deal with situations revolving around their emotions at later stages in life. The development of the cognitive abilities of children is also enhanced through participation in creative arts which trigger their imaginations hence expanding their thinking and mental capacities (Koster 157). They then learn to internalize the new experiences thereby boosting their cognitive capabilities. The sounds, colour, size and the movements that characterize creative arts stimulate the brains of young children with increased neural connections and strength of the brain from the exercises involved in the activities.
Children, through creative arts, also find ways of interacting to one another and to their surrounding through fun, enabling them to learn naturally with whatever new they gain during the experience sticking right on their minds. Creative arts encourage an early and a fun way of numeracy development especially when they learn about measurement and basic counting, colours, shapes and texture. As a result, it develops the concentration of the participating kids when they listen to their teachers, following instructions. Demonstration of higher levels of cognitive skills and greater social competence (Essa 20).
In Stein Waldorf pedagogy, he incorporated a philosophy that a child has a fantasy which must be engaged in order to ensure that their learning process is smooth (Nutbrown, and Clough 38). Creative arts engages this fantasy to boost brain capacity, maximizes attention and concentration. The activities enhance the development of reading skills and expose them to new concepts around them accompanied by new vocabulary. Such new concepts boost their self-esteem, expressiveness, help them learn the importance of teamwork, service to others, and improves their personality. The activities also help them learn the value of time and achieving set goals and become aware of their social context and culture. Pretend play according to Piaget’s theory, connect social and cognitive aspects of a young child as they play, through reality and its representation. (Spodek and Saracho 12).
Some developmentalists propose theories that pretend play as part of creative arts, results in the stimulation and emergence of metacognition in young children, that is, their ability to think about their own thinking. In the process of pretend play, children become aware of exactly what they say, do or think as a result of metacognition. When young children play with manipulatives, for instance, the development of their numeracy and mathematical skills are massively facilitated (Spodek and Saracho 12). According to Piaget, cognition of young children is boosted through their exploration and participation in creative arts activities involving play, more specifically imaginative or pretend play. Vygotsky also agreed that play enables young children to learn new things, which depends on how the children socially interact with their environment and how much support they get.
The Early Years Learning Framework emphasizes strongly on learning based on plays, that is, through the activities involving creative arts. It also points out the benefits that come with creative arts in relation to development in communication and language which promotes literacy and numeracy in the early childhood learning, as well as social and emotional development. Psychologists believe that social role-taking during creative arts such as drama promotes cognition when children get into various roles that they enact, which requires and encourages sensitivity to human psychology and feelings. Research also finds that vocabulary of young children develops massively when they engage in pretend play (Spodek and Saracho 12).
Theories and the Roles of the Educators
Early childhood educators and their roles can be understood from three theoretical perspectives of early child development. The educators may be either maturationsists, environmentalists or behaviourists and constructivists also referred to as the interactionist. All the theories, however, have a common factor that is the incorporation of creative arts in the process of early childhood education.
Maturalism
Maturationism as an early educational philosophy, claims that a child is a growing organism within which exists knowledge. As the child grows, he or she automatically and naturally acquire knowledge from the surrounding since as they mature, they become ready for the knowledge. According to maturalists’ philosophy on development, a teacher's primary role is to observe and determine the development signs in the child as he ensures a surrounding that places fewer demands on the child. The philosophy behind maturalism is that education purposes to provide passive support to a child’s growth instead of just filling the child with information (Edwards 260). Thus instead of providing just guidance, techniques to handle and solve problems, and reinforcement, a maturalist teacher believe in the provision of rote memorization tasks and additional maturation time to the child. It purports that the teachers should at all times place few demands on the child as much as they possibly can since with freedom follows responsibility leading to maturity.
Behaviourism
Environmentalists or , on the other hand, have a belief that knowledge exists outside of a child and they, therefore, acquire it bit by bit progressively with the environment playing an important factor in shaping the changes in the child's behaviour. A behaviourist teacher's role is to ensure the production of the correct response in learning and behaviour by planning, carrying out and evaluating instructions and supplying required reinforcement. The teacher initiates and directs experiences through the development of tools that encourages the young children to explore their environment through creative arts which may be self-directed or co-operative, which is in accordance with Montessori's philosophy (Cattaruzza 4).
Constructivism
According to constructivists or interactionists, children learn through interactions with both the environment and people around them. In his theory, Piaget claims that such interactions lead the children in imitating their fellows and people around them (Nutbrown and Clough 56). This process is maximized through the application of creative arts in teaching the young the young children. Through the activities they engage in, their development progresses through motivations of enquiry and extended understanding. A constructivist teacher purpose to guide the children and ensure the existence of an environment conducive for learning. They ensure that around the children exists materials that are appropriate for the development of the children through them exploring and manipulating such materials. The children engage in conversation with the teachers as they move from one creative arts activity to the other, with the teachers providing the much needed meaningful experience that the young children need.
Role of Educators in Early Childhood Learning Process
The roles of an educator in early childhood education include organizing for learning through daily plans and long-term plans to ensure that they provide learning opportunities which are relevant and that incorporate the interests, experiences, and capabilities of the children. Through the application of relevant strategies, they enact, responds and interact accordingly while engaging the young children in learning experiences and thereafter provide feedback to rectify the wrong results thereby strengthening learning. They monitor, asses and record the learning progress and participation of the children which facilitates their roles to nurture and respond to the young children through ample verbal exchange and interaction aiming at educating and not controlling them (Essa 19). Educators also analyze and evaluate the child learning progress and get relevant information which they pass to parents and their colleagues, to enable reflection on the progress of the children in order to further their professional growth.
Early childhood educators ensure interactions and collaborations with other colleagues from other areas of the curriculum, which enables them to identify areas to focus on and enhance professional learning through integrating creative arts in the various areas of the curriculum. The result is the ability of other teachers from other areas of the curriculum to contribute to the children’s learning process through arts, thereby adhering to the principles of the Early Years Learning Framework. Through creative arts, educators create an environment that supports multi-modal learning incorporating various areas of the curriculum. Early childhood education, therefore, is not really about the young children but rather the relationship between educators and the young children that positively influences the educational development of the children (Spodek and Saracho 9).
Educators involving children in creative arts may not necessarily be teachers but they work closely with them to ensure that the learning process of the young children flows smoothly. Such educators have a role in introducing poetic languages into the learning process, which are forms of expression characterized by aesthetic aspects such as music, dance, photography and music. In accordance with the Early Years Learning Framework, the educators consider the contextual factors, in which case creative arts, during the process of designing and implementation of a quality learning process in the Kindergarten years. The role of creative arts educators in early childhood learning is very important and critical that research has found out that teachers not specialized in the field find it very difficult to offer the children the much-needed insight thus confirming the important role that the creative arts educators paly (Sumsion et al. 29).
Conclusion
Early childhood educators, therefore, enhance the learning of the children by making knowledgeable decisions relating to teaching and learning, in line with the areas identified in the Early Years Learning Framework. All the areas of curriculum planning should focus on the interest of children, with educators coming into play in expanding the children’s interests with rich ideas and new opportunities through the use of creative arts incorporated in other aspects of the curriculum. Ensuring proper learning process of young children, therefore, involves the integration of creative art experiences in early childhood classroom and the environment around them with which they interact and exploit during learning as explained by a number of theorists in their philosophies.
Works Cited
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Edwards, Suzy. "New directions: Charting the paths for the role of sociocultural theory in early childhood education and curriculum." Contemporary issues in early childhood 4.3 (2003): 251-266.
Fox, J. Englebright, and Robert Schirrmacher. Art and creative development for young children. Cengage Learning, 2014.
Koster, Joan Bouza. Growing artists: teaching the arts to young children. Cengage Learning, 2014.
Nutbrown, Cathy, and Peter Clough. Early childhood education: History, philosophy and experience. Sage, 2014.
Spodek, Bernard, and Olivia N. Saracho. Handbook of research on the education of young children. Routledge, 2014.
Sumsion, Jennifer, et al. "Insider perspectives on developing Belonging, Being & Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia." Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, vol. 34, no. 4, 2009, p. 4+. Academic OneFile, Accessed 1 Sept. 2018.
