Why Is Visual Art Education Good For My Child?

Many people don't know that before Yellow Bird Studio opened in 2017, we (Florie and Pamela) first started out careers as classroom teachers! With many, many years of experience and countless hours of training on child development and education, we combined this with our own love and abilities in the creative arts to form the pedagogical foundation of our classes.

In this and future posts, we want to help you understand the value of visual arts as part of a complete education for children, regardless of if they are naturally gifted/talented in art.

The very first reason why visual arts are valuable for children is because it allows children to express their ideas and understanding of the world without having to have or use oral or written language. This may not seem important, but children's language skills are continuing to develop into adulthood, so having another way to express themselves is very powerful and important to them.

Children can show us, through their art and creations, what they know and how they are growing in that knowledge. As adults, we get a better understanding of this higher level thinking than any test could give us.

We do not regard our student's arts and crafts as "cute" products, we see them as powerful messages they are communicating to us. We, as their teachers, know how to encourage this deep meaning making and respect that process.

Visual arts are also valuable because they require children to do something called "motor planning", which as time goes on, results in better skills in cognitive planning.

For example, a young child may want to make a castle, and they then have the challenge to plan this out. Not only do they need to plan what materials they need, find them, gather them and then need to move their bodies/hands/eyes to execute the plan. They will make lots of mistakes along the way, but the mistakes will reinforce better motor planning in the future.

At some point, a child will not need to physically move the materials around or draw out a plan- they will simply be able to think of the plan and in their mind, know the steps and actions needed to create the project. This translates into school and life success because we then have better skills to carry out our job or other meaningful idea in a more organized and thorough way.

Visual arts are also valuable because children learn how to deal with emotions such as frustration, confusion, perfectionism, mistakes and even success.

When projects go wrong, or they are not getting the look they want, they learn how to deal with the feelings that come up with that, which is part of life! We have so many students who come to us as mini-perfectionists and then leave more flexible and kinder to themselves.

Even when a piece works out just right, they learn how to accept compliments and positive attention, something that surprisingly some children have a hard time with!

Last, but not final, visual art making helps children become reflective. We encourage children to speak in front of the group and share their art- what went well, what was hard, what they learned. This develops public speaking skills for the speaker, and even empathy and listening skills within the audience who is listening.

The process of thinking about your thinking is called "metacognition" and is so valuable as a functioning person in the world. The ability to reflect and assess and create new solutions is important both personally and for our world.

We could go on and on about the benefits of visual arts because we have spent our entire careers watching how powerful it is and are so passionate about it! We have not even covered the eye-hand coordination benefits, social benefits, and benefits to self-esteem.

Our mission at Yellow Bird Studio is to not let the importance of visual arts be lost and forgotten in this landscape of academic testing and achievement where it, and others like music and drama, have been left to the margins of education and in some places, completely cut out.

We will step off our soap box- for now- and hope you explore the different classes that we offer! Our classes start August 18th and some only have one or two spots left.

Over the next month we will send out more posts that will highlight a specific class and give you insight into it beyond the description, so you can peek into the studio and experience a little bit of what we get to see every day!