A Joyful Call
By Rachel da Silva
The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover .
- Jean Piaget
Play is widely understood as important to brain health in human beings — and other animals — of all ages . Equally well understood is the outsized importance of play in the brain development of young children , and in early-childhood and primary education . Nowhere are the rich possibilities of play as a component of pedagogy more accessible than in the pre-primary art studio . Thoughtful art teachers are then left to consider exactly how to harness the motivation and personal investment that the opportunity to play promotes in young children . The solution we have found at Saint David ’ s is to carefully balance the heat and excitement of invention with the cooling and steadying effect of focused , methodical preparation and execution .
To achieve that balance we begin by engaging the play instinct in service of understanding , such as when , in the pottery studio , we start children out with a lump of clay , a couple of simple clay tools , and a set of clear instructions and rules . They then begin making all manner of things , often while cheerfully narrating the terms of their object and the imaginary world that it occupies . What they do not know — nor need they , really — is that at the same time , they are gaining hand strength , hand-eye coordination , and a kinesthetic understanding of the material — clay — in their hands . When all is said and done , they gleefully clean up — once again , methodically following procedures . Thus the invitation to play inventively is balanced by the expectation of personal responsibility and good studio practice .
In the kindergarten art studio , class often begins with a playful warm-up we call Doodle Now ! Students are asked to make a drawing based on a prompt :
In pottery , we start children out with a lump of clay , a couple of simple clay tools , and a set of clear instructions and rules .
“ Draw things that are under the ground ;” “ Draw things that fly but don ’ t have wings .” In this way , they are invited to call upon their personal experience and their capacity for playful thought to solve a conceptual problem .
The kindergarten wood-assemblage project offers an opportunity for our young artists to strengthen their fine motor skills , hand-eye coordination , and spatial reasoning , as well as to deepen their capacity for independent , creative thought . The work starts with a base — in and of itself an important concept in art and design . Students learn to apply prefabricated wooden pieces — spheres , spindles , disks and the like — to the base to create unique sculptural assemblages . As the project progresses , the students move from sorting and selecting the wooden pieces they will use , to assembling them with glue , to painting them with richly hued tempera paint . Throughout , the work becomes a space into which the students spontaneously project their imaginations . For while they need direction and assistance in assembling their forms , they come fully prepared to invest them with the kinds of narratives that fill the minds of actively engaged children .
Each child develops a storyline that explains the nature of his structure , from futuristic cities with royal courts to alien spacecraft hovering above Earth , hidden in the clouds . These narratives provide the raisons d ’ etre of the structures and guide the aesthetic decisions that define them . In the final stages of the project , as the boys mix and apply paint , these worlds in miniature truly come to life .
Just as importantly , the students have spent hours solving engineering problems , learning how glue works , applying paint
Winter 2023 • 9