I think it would be a safe bet to say that all preschool educators and parents of preschoolers believe that art has a major place in any preschool curriculum environment.

The question that begs to be answered, however is what type of art?

The standard fare of art that has been fed to kids for generations in many of the traditional preschools has been the classic arts and crafts projects.Basically following a model, or teacher created idea...and making replicas of these projects.

How many teachers though stop long enough to ask themselves, WHY?

What benefits are my students gaining through these arts and crafts projects.

There are many teachers who have attempted to answer this question.

Allow me to quote some of those answers.

#1 "Well the kids need a way to remember their lessons and what better way do do it than through arts and crafts"

#2" The children need a way to follow directions and this is the best way to do it"

#3 "Well its fun for the kids"

In order to determine if these three reasons are valid we need to be cognizant of the goings on in preschool.

What do we really feel is the role of a good preschool education in early childhood education and how does art fit into it.

Anyone that is a serious student of early childhood education has studied many of the original psychologists that discovered how children think and develop. Based on these findings curriculum has been developed to meet the needs of young children.

Jean Piaget a very well known psychologist discovered that children are very concrete learners and learn best by actually doing and being involved with materials themselves.

Erick Erickson another well known psychologist taught us "The eight stages of Man". He explains how man goes through many different psychosocial stages where they are struggling to develop identity.Children at the preschool stages have the great need to develop their self esteem,their sense of initiative and autonomy.

Based on their findings we have learned that children need to be given lots of concrete experiences to actually make them think and solve problems. We also need to make sure that our preschool curriculum is full of activities that allow the children choices which encourages independence, allows them to use their initiative and to feel good about themselves.

So back to art in the preschool curriculum.

If we look at all of the classic, traditional arts and crafts done in traditional preschools, nursery and kindergarten classrooms we will see that most of the activities are arts and crafts activities that are designed to make out children into little robots. Copy exactly what I tell you to do in a step by step fashion.

Open ended art however is different. Open ended art or progressive art allows the children to think for themselves, solve problems, take initiative and to feel good about themselves. Wouldn't you feel better about yourself if your artwork looked different than everybody else's, instead of seeing 20 identical projects hanging side by side.

Wouldn't it be great if your little preschoolers felt that their teachers trusted them enough to allow them to create at their own developmental level.

But what about the three concerns we expressed above...helping children remember their lessons, direction following and fun.

Let's go over thee points one at a time:

Remembering their lessons: Art is too important of an activity in its own right to be used to jog the children's memories. There are alot of better ways to get children to remember things. There are too many important skills that they children can get out of art and besides there are open ended art activities that teacher can do with their preschoolers that can also help them remember their lessons.

Following directions: Again art should not be wasted on following directions when the side effects will be a stifling and controlling. There are many other more exciting, and fulfilling ways to learn to follow directions than wasting it on art and finally...

Fun...Who said it is fun to copy exactly what the book or the teacher said on how to do a project . How much more fun it is to do open ended art that allows for problem solving, self esteem and fun. Yes! real fun.