• Start with the Arts
  The primary purpose of the program is to enable all young children, including those with disabilities, to learn and grow through:

PLAY - WONDER - DISCOVERY - CREATIVITY

Program Goals:

1. use a thematic approach to integrate learning for children

2. provide an objective based instructional program

3. involve parents in their child's education

4. actively engage young children in the process of learning and creating

5. encourage the use of the arts as important learning strategies

6. promote the inclusion of children with special needs into general education programs

7. develop communication, thinking, and literacy skills

8. promote experience-based learning

Instructional format of START with the ARTS:

A.  Activate prior knowledge through sensory experience:

Visual - Aural - Touch - Smell  - Taste

B.  Explore and discover new knowledge through an arts activity while linking knowledge to activity throughout by prompting and coaching.
C.  Discuss and reflect upon experience and knowledge gained using a positive and affirming critical response format.
D.  Record knowledge gained in a learning log via drawing, audio recording, dictation, photographs, poems, one word evaluations...and encourage sharing of E.  the log and experience with the parents via the letter home.

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• Time for Art
  Target Audience - This presentation is appropriate for all child care workers working with age 5 through fourth grade.
  
  Presentation Abstract - This workshop demonstrates how art projects are much more than just a fun activity. If offers innovative ways to work with children. Art has been shown to facilitate learning and critical thinking skills as documented in Arts with the Brain in Mind by Eric Jensen. Gail Showalter, the presenter, has authored a handbook, Time for Art, published by The American Printing House for the Blind (2002), which contains numerous art activities with companion lessons for children.
  
  Program Objectives (rationale)

  • To recognize the importance of the arts in the learning process.

  • To offer actual projects and activities for use with children.

  • To motivate participants to implement more art related activities.
     

• Art ‘Specially for Special Students'
  The evidence is in and art is the winner. Art provides real benefits to students. The arts are not so much a result of inspiration and innate talent as they are a person’s capacities for creative thinking and imagining, problem-solving, critical judgment, and a host of other mental processes. The arts represent forms of cognition every bit as potent as the verbal and logical/mathematical forms of cognition that have been the traditional focus of public education.
  
  Art offers a variety of ways for learning goals to be met by students with special needs. Art offers another means of instruction. Art gives the student another means of expression and art provides students with engagement during the learning process.
  
  Gail’s book, which is being published in 2002 by The American Printing House for the Blind, contains art projects along with companion lessons for teaching using art.
  
  In this workshop participants will:
  
  Develop a clear understanding of the value of the creative process.
  Take-away practical guidelines for art projects that can be done with their students