Art Education is a large field. there are hundreds of books, videos, classes and websites that teach art education.

Art Education is different for early childhood education as is most education for preschool, kindergarten and early elementary school age children.

Basically in order for young children to learn anything, lessons need to be as hands on as possible. Therefor art education can be handled in a few different ways.

One way is to actually teach about artists and their art. Take children to museums to experience the art of various artists. Have many books in the classrooms and invite other artists in to discuss these famous artists.

But the best way to really teach children about the different artist and their techniques is actually have the children USE  many of the techniques these artist used. When learning about Van Gogh, try to imitate his style, when learning about Seraut, try to imitate his etc.

At the same time the children can be viewing lots of these artists works to get a feel of how they painted.

For very young children I am of the firm belief that we must start with more abstract artist. This way children do not get intimidated by seeing so many realistic pictures that they know they cannot emulate.

Mondrian, Kandinsky and Pollack are just some of the artist that children can be exposed to. This way they will feel like they also can be artists.

As they start with their first attempts and are shown what real bona fide artisst have done that hang in museums they will feel that they can empathize and do as well as them.

Mary Ann F Kohl has wonderful book called Discovering Great Artists.

I will be using alot of her  materials along with other materials I have found to help you give your children and students wonderful art experiences to help them along in their own art education at the same time.

I will try to give you a little bit of background about the artist along with what techniques they used with some links so that you will be able to view their work if you are not familiar with it.

I will start with the first artist in the next post in this series.