Studer Community Institute

Teaching young children through the arts

March 17, 2015
/ Reggie Dogan
/ education

Almost everyday preschoolers in Danielle Hightower’s class at Little Red School House ask to snap their fingers, pat their feet and count in unison. What appears to be fun and games to the tiny toddlers, is really a teaching strategy to improve their language, literacy and math skills. Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts provides arts-based teaching strategies to early childhood teachers, caregivers, parents and their children from ages 0 to 5 through drama, art, music and dance. With a mission to ensure that children are prepared and ready to enter school, the Early Learning Coalition of Escambia County has signed on with the Institute to provide educators with the tools to use creative arts to introduce and reinforce important skills to improve literacy. “It is really creative and I learned a lot of new stuff to do with the kids,” said Hightower, who teaches 2 and 3 year olds at Little Red School House daycare. “These lessons really help children learn.” Using workshops and classroom training, Wolf Trap teaching artists train teachers and caregivers how to use performing arts techniques to enhance classroom instruction and help young children learn skills related to STEM education. For more than 30 years, schools across the U.S. have used the Virginia-based Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts into classrooms to help teachers integrate arts into lesson plans. Preschoolers are exposed to the performing arts, which can in most cases, enhance their ability to use their imagination and express themselves creatively. With Wolf Trap techniques, instructors are able to use art as an instructional tool to teach lessons related to STEM, the acronym commonly used to describe curricula centered on science, technology, engineering and math. “They taught providers how to get the kids to talk, to speak out, problem-solve through trial and error. I was blown away by it,” said Justine Olan, outreach specialist for the Early Learning Coalition of Escambia County. “It’s not just feel-good, it’s embedded and it’s done all with core standards.” The Early Learning Coalition this year invited its 200 daycare providers, which includes some 1,600 early childhood educators. Wolf Trap trainers offered them four STEM academy sessions over four months. More than 60 providers and teachers attended two, 3-hour workshops to learn strategies and techniques to use in early education and promote STEM education. Something as simple as making shapes using straight and curvy lines helps children understand the concept of geometry, increasing both math and physical development. Participating in drama and role-playing, they learn several skills, including how to follow directions, take turns, verbalize feelings, work together and understand each other. Through music, children learn comparisons, a critical tool for math and language. Music also helps them recognize rhythmic patterns, a math skill that’s also important for speaking and movement. And there’s dance, which also involves patterns, the basic algebraic thinking a widely recognized building block for future success in math. Ultimately, the goal of the Early Learning Coalition is to ensure that children are prepared and ready to enter school. In the classroom, learning starts with the teacher. “When you can get the teacher motivated, whether they are been the business 20 year or whether they are new, it makes them excited and that feeds into the classroom, especially with performing arts,” said Olan. One class taught “Mother Goose on the Loose.” It incorporated vocabulary, rhymes and songs through puppetry. “A lot of teachers when they hear the word performing arts, they say ‘uugh!’” said Vickie Pugh, program operations director for the ELC of Escambia County. “They think they have to be a trained singer or dancer, but the whole idea of Wolf Trap is that they don’t.” With lessons like Mother Goose on the Loose, Pugh said, there’s no need for special curriculum, materials or books, because most people already know a whole line of Mother Goose chants, rhymes ad songs. “Counting piggies and counting fingers starts little babies on the whole journey into math,” Pugh said. “It starts with their bodies, and it starts then with Wolf Trap folks just showing teachers, and I think that’s what they really love, it’s like ‘oh, I already know this I just didn’t define it as math.’” Studies have shown that performing arts-integrated teaching techniques improves young children’s ability to learn critical life skills. Teachers using Wolf Trap Institute’s arts-integrated strategies have positive effects on children’s learning, according to an independent study in Fairfax County in Virginia paid for by the U.S. Department of Education. Additional research has shown an increase in math, literacy and basic life skills among children who have been involved in classroom using the performing arts-based techniques. “Some of our providers who never participate in anything are so into this,” Olan said. ‘A part of making early childhood education better, and ultimately, the goal as a coalition is that we want to see children ready to enter school.”

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Teaching young children through the arts

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