Promoting Inclusivity Through Art

Participating in Kitchen art enables children to develop practices that helps them to link their senses and themselves so that they are to understand their environment better. The materials collected and used for this exercise ensures that children are able to learn by using the sense of touch, smell, and vision (Carpenter, 2012). The inclusivity comes in when the teacher asks the children questions about what they see, what they feel in terms of temperature texture among other qualities. With this exercises children are able to have their own interpretation of the different items and materials (Lowenfield, n.d).

b) Painting:

How it promotes inclusive practice

In this type of art the children put their imagination on paper and reveal to the world their fantasies through their drawings (Neox kids learn and play, 2017). The drawings can be done in different methods such as paintings, mosaic or collage. The children are able to use the provided materials in a way that they feel comfortable with according to their abilities. This will enable them create their fantasy land. This promotes inclusive practice because through the drawings and the pictures, they are able to connect with other children, especially when they are painting together, hence they experience the perspective of the other children.

2. Dance:

a) incorporated in story

How it promotes inclusive practice:

Dance makes the story telling session very interesting, and it also enables children to be able to remember the lessons that is being passed across by the teacher because they can relate with a particular dance style which they saw the teacher do, or which the saw their fellow pupil do, and also a style which they themselves did during the process of storytelling. The inclusive practice is seen in the participatory bit because this is a participatory process. It encourages the children to participate without really competing among each other. Which means that it fosters a lot of collaboration between the children themselves.

b) Dramatized dance

How it promotes inclusive practice

Dramatized dance is an activity where the children are given a n assignment to research on a particular community and the dances the community used to make during certain ceremonies. They then have to come up with dance styles and choreography to show the celebration of the event for the chosen community. This is done by dramatizing the even such that the dance tells a particular story to the audience. The audience will be watching the story in the dance while the dancers sing and dance and dramatize. For example a wedding ceremony.

3. Drama:

a) choral verse

How it promotes inclusive practice

Since the children are encouraged to memories the given scripts, the teacher can have the children memorize their verses and their lines either in pairs or in groups. This will mean that the children will have to encourage each other to memorize their lines together. This will also ensure that the strong children who learn faster are able to help their colleagues who are slow learners to be able to catch up with the rest since the process of memorizing verses in groups makes the art fun. It becomes even more fun when making the presentations to the audience.

b) Play/ skit

How it promotes inclusive practice.

A play encourage inclusivity since it requires that for the message to be conveyed, there should be different participants who are referred to as cast. Each cast member has a role to play, where they assume the traits of a different character as required by the script. For example a doctor, a nurse, a patient, among other roles.  This promotes inclusivity as they children have to keep on rehearsing, and to work together for good results (Guybrushg, 2014).     

4. Music

a) singing

How it promotes inclusive practice

According to (Montessori world Educational institute, n.d ) Music promotes inclusivity since it can be incorporated in different ways in the school curriculum so that all the children can be involved. This can be through having the children learn songs, compete in various competitions with other schools among other methods. This art also promotes talent among the children since the teacher will be able to identify, and build the writers of music from within the student body so that they can continue practicing and making their talent better. Further, music encourages the children to sing, play and express themselves in their own way.

b) Learning experience

How it promotes inclusive practice

According to (Malburg and Patsalides, 2014) Here children are encouraged to creatively make their own instruments from the available resources within the classroom setup. The learning experience is seen when the students are told of different communities which used different instruments for different purposes so that they can choose from the communities talked about, which instrument they would like to make. This will encourage and build research skills among the children since they will have to go and research about the particular communities and come up with answers before reverting to the teacher with an answer as to which instrument they would wish to make. (Prek + K Sharing, 2013)

PART B: RATIONAL

Drama- poetry and dramatized choral verse

Age bracket 6 – 8 years

Classroom of 20 students

Description of the experience

a dramatized choral verse is a form of poetry which is performed by a group of people, who assume different roles according to how the verse has been written. The groups dramatize the verse to bring out imagery effect to the audience and to make it as entertaining as possible.

What will the children learn:

through this activity the children will learn, develop and improve on a set of various skills which include problem solving skills, reflection, using art materials or props, being innovative and creative, and learning how to express their own ideas and views.

The pupils will also get a chance to learn how to execute role play, and dramatize various situations and scenarios that present themselves, and to even further communicate their feelings about certain issues. Through the use of skills such as gestures, facial expression, tonal variation, miming movement and space, they will be able to pass a message to their audience. (Burton, 2012)

They will learn how to improvise and create props and tools that would be used to symbolize certain aspects of the message they would like to convey to their audience, such as improvising spears, a king’s crown, among other things which can be improved so that imagery is created in the eyes and the minds of the audience. 

Other pupils get the interest to write poetry and this would be seen even in their future careers, especially those who are influenced into becoming thespians and artists.  

Teaching strategies:

This would be taught using encouraging the children to memorize the materials or scripts given to them and encouraging them to assume the role of the character, or the personal you are acting at that point.

Demonstration of inclusive practices: The child participation will be seen because this is a student centered activity which aims to build the skills of the children. It is the children who will be memorizing the scripts and presenting to final piece to their audience.   

Visual arts – kitchen art

Age brackets 4-6 year olds

Classroom of 20 students

Description of the experience: The idea behind the kitchen art is meant to have the children express their own creativity through using local and readily available materials from around the home, and the school environment. The kitchen art gifts children who will be participating with the chance to put to use all the five senses which are the sense of touch, sense of smell, sense of taste, sense of sight and sense of hearing. This activity will give the children a chance to the children to create and express their interests around the kitchen. The children can create any form of kitchen art which they feel that expresses in the best way what they see in the kitchen, what they would like to be added to the kitchen and what they would like to be removed from the kitchen. This can be creating aprons by using materials such as newspapers, or manila papers among others.

What will the children learn:  this activity will help in boosting the self-esteem of the children especially for those who are slow learners and those who are more introverted because they will see this activity to be more of a personal engagement?

Borrowing will also be learnt by the children in this activity since they would be required to work together in groups. Here, the child will be able to learn and borrow from the presentations of the other peers and in effect, the child will be able to learn a few things which may not be in the child’s presentation.

Another skill that the children will learn is problem solving skills and dispute resolution (Pasadena, 2011).  This is because they will be using the materials which the feel need to be in the kitchen, coupled with concepts and processes to help them express their own ideas. The child will also learn how to cooperate with others and this will encourage team work, even with other children. Children are usually motivated to explore using materials, and the kitchen art will give them a chance to be more creative, enhance their observation skills and improve their senses.

Teaching strategies: encouraging the children to put their imagination to practice and communicate their imagination by using the different available materials will be very vital strategy in ensuring that the child is able to accomplish the task.

Impressing upon the children on the need to take responsibility so that their art work ranks the best will really encourage the children to better their best.

There will be intervals of reflection of what the child has done so as to help guide every child to come up with the best piece of art that they can. Here the teacher will also use teaching models such as preparation, verification, explanation and allocating time for every aspect of the activity.

Demonstration of inclusive practice:  this activity will be able to provide the children with an opportunity to have their parents involved in their school work as it will require their parents to help the children out. This will further encourage better relationships between pupil and parent, and even parent and teacher relationship since they will be able to communicate with the teachers on occasional bias just to find out exactly what the assignment given to the children entails.

The kitchen art activity is an activity that takes time, and as such it will give the child an opportunity to work according to the child’s ability. It will also motivate the child’s mind and their cognitive ability will be improved.

Dance – incorporated in story

Age bracket 5-8 years

Classroom of 20

Description of the experience: here the story telling is accompanied by a dance. It can be a story about animals in the animal kingdom where the animals have a feast and a dancing competition. As the story is told, valuable lessons will be taught to the children but the dance will be used to make the story more enjoyable. The use of dance in telling a story will held the children to remember the story or a particular book because of the dancing that was being done by the teacher or the story teller when narrating the story. Children will be able to relate to the story through remembering the dance (Kinnan, 2012).

What will the children learn?  One of the things that the children will learn is how to be organized. A good story usually has three parts; that is the introduction, the main body and the conclusion. The main body usually contains the bulk of the story being told, and that too is usually organized so that there is a good flow of the story. This helps the children to be organized in their thinking and in their way of doing things.

Another lesson that the children can learn from this is that they can use their technical skills when practicing dance. Dancing is a physical exercise which entails movement of many parts of the body together. Dance can either be cultural dance or modern dance.

Teaching strategies: one of the teaching methods that would be employed is asking questions, both in between the story telling period and at the end of the tory telling period. This will be able to gauge whether the children have been able to learn anything from the tory that has been told to accompany the dance. This will be achieved by fussing the dance and the story.

Asking questions is a communication strategy that is incorporated in between the learning process. The verbal communication can be accompanied by movements and the use of props so that the learners are able to grasp the concept very well.

Aping the teacher is another strategy that can be used in this context so as to teach the children. For example the children can be asked to ape the teacher, or to ape a dancing style they think an animal performed during the animal dance completion in the story.   The message will be deemed to have been passed across if the children enjoy the dance. This will also help the teacher in knowing whether the children have interesting the dance or not and through this, the teacher will be able to engage the children in more interesting activities or similar activities to encourage learning.

Demonstration of inclusive practice: inviting the children to participate in the dance will show the aspect of child participation in the art. The inclusive practice in this art is seen because it encourages creativity. The teacher can let a child to lead the dance. Giving such exposing chances to children ensures that the children will earn to be more expressive. This can especially be done through using popular songs.

Drama – Play

Age Bracket 6-8

Classroom of 20

Description of the experience a play or a skit is a type of art which involves a number of people who assume different characters and act as those characters so that a message is conveyed to the audience. Plays always have a moral lesson at the end the act.

What will the children learn?

Cooperation: Presentation of a play requires the whole cast to work together as a team so that the team can be able to produce results. Engaging in this art fosters good cooperation skills among the children. This is because there are scenes which require the case members to have a conversation. This cooperation would definitely be seen in other aspects of the lives of the children even in their daily routine, when it comes to taking responsibilities in class and in the school, even during participating in extra curriculum activities. 

Problem solving skills. This art encourages problem solving skills since there will be instances where there would be conflict among the students in the course of working together to have a production. When there is conflict, and the problems are resolved, it grows their ability to solve disputes among themselves on their own. As such children would not really rely on adults to be able to solve petty disputes among themselves.

Social ethics is another skill that the children will learn from the art. This is because plays are usually written in a way that at the end of the play, there is a certain message that is conveyed to the community and to the audience. Most plays speak about social evils and how to avoid social evils such as stealing, violence, and encouraging virtues such as hard work. Other plays are plays of fairy tale which speak about good friendship between boys and girls. From the end results, the children would be able to understand what the society expects of them and how they ought to carry themselves. Plays are able to send this message from the point when the children are very young. 

Public speaking is another thing that plays teach children. The ability to master the lines, and be able to present them in public or inform of their classmates encourages them to be good public speakers.

Teaching strategy: The teacher uses skills that are meant to encourage children to be confident and grow their self-esteem. This is because drama and particularly ply, requires those two skills. Once the child is able to build his confidence such that they are able to stand in front of a multitude of people and speak, it means that they can become very good public speakers and can be able to articulate their issues very well.  

Demonstration of inclusive practice

plays and skits show inclusive practices by virtue of there being participation from all members of the class. Even when this is read out loud in class, different children will take different roles and read them out loud.

References

Burton, S. (2002). An exploration of preschool children’s spontaneous songs and chants. Retrieved from http://www-usr.rider.edu/~vrme/v2n1/visions/burton-an%20exploration%20of%20preschool%20children.pdf

Carpenter, M. (2012, August 27). Son banging pots and pans. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WyIRXXffaM

Fox, J. E., & Berry, S. (2008). Art in early childhood: curriculum connections. Retrieved from http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=113

Gardener Museum. (2010, August 23). Thinking Through Art from Gardner Museum on Vimeo. Retrieved from https://player.vimeo.com/video/14368624

Guybrushg. (2014, November 28). Cinderella Drama by My Montessori 2014. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODD2pTrzss8

Kinnan, A. (2012, February 19). Music Bag Activity. Retrieved from http://funactivtiesinearlychildhood.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/music-bag-activity.html

LOWENFIELD. (n.d.). LOWENFELD’S STAGES OF ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT. Retrieved from http://www.d.umn.edu/~jbrutger/Lowenf.html

Malburg, S., & Patsalides, L. (2014, November 17). Using Musical Instruments With Preschool Children to Tap Into Learning. Retrieved from http://www.brighthubeducation.com/preschool-crafts-activities/123294-making-music-in-the-classroom/

Montessori world Educational Institute. (n.d.). Singing with Young Children. Retrieved from http://www.montessoriworld.org/Music/Singing.html

Neox kids learn and play. (2017, April 24). Learn Colors and Seasons Painting Fun Sorting Montessori activities kids play teaching methods. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV4WrYex7yQ

Pasadena, K. (2011, October 25). Exploring the Outdoor Classroom. Retrieved from http://exploringtheoutdoorclassroom.blogspot.com.au/2011_10_01_archive.html

Prek + K Sharing. (2013, February 5). SONGWRITING with CHILDREN. Retrieved from http://prekandksharing.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/songwriting-with-children.html

Tod, A. (2012, January 22). Snow and Lights - Global community art project. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nAdLing4ww