Artsy Baby

A Diverse Learning Experience for Children

By Kelly Burgess

In the two and a half years the Orchard family has lived in St. Louis, Mo., one of their favorite haunts has been COCA , the Center of Creative Arts, which focuses on arts education for children as young as 9 months. Lily and Ethan Orchardhave both taken movement and art classes that involve a range of cultures and disciplines. Their mom, Betsy, loves not only that she'scultivating a love and appreciation of the arts, but also that she's providing a diverse learning experience for her children.

Arts education for very young children isn't about making sure they recognize a Mozart concerto or a Monet masterpiece by the time they're in elementary school. Rather, it's about helping them discover and release their own delight in the joy of the creative arts.

Anna Reyner, a Los Angeles-based art therapist and author of Smart Art Ideas, says it's also about helping them learn to express themselves. "Very young children don't have a lot of verbal skills, and art is a means of communication for them," she says. "Even when they become more verbal, art can help them explain the complexity of their world. It's a perfect way to express their feelings."

Debbie Harris, a creative movement teacher at COCA who has a background in both early child education and modern dance, says she has children in her classes who can't even talk yet but communicate amazingly well through movement. "Arts education should be about who am I now and who am I becoming," says Harris. "It helps a child own all parts of herself."

The challenge for parentswith encouraging babies to explore the arts is in changing our cultural view of what art is. Most of us grew up with a "color between the lines" mindset that really doesn't allow for a lot of creative expression. In fact, Susan Striker, author of the Anti-Coloring Book (Owl Books) series, says the mediocre drawings in coloring books inhibit a child's imagination. "Adults tend to have expectations of what art should look like, and they impose those expectations way too early," she says. "We call what children do 'just scribbles,' but these scribbles are an important activity. They mark the beginning of literacy, which is something we should celebrate."

Striker also points out that for very young children, art is a full body experience. They will often move their entire bodies in rhythm to the marks they're making or medium they're manipulating. This helps to imprint patterns on their brains and is an important step in the process of learning to read and write.

Want to see more?

• Sensory Play for Toddlers: Salty, Sour, Bitter and Sweet
• Bonding From the Beginning: Use Baby's Senses to Create That Special Connection
• The Art of Creation: Raising Creative Kids
• Talk about it!