IF YOU THINK ART ISN'T EMPHASIZED IN THE MONTESSORI CLASSROOM...THINK AGAIN!
Photo from the artists at Big Stock Photo
In the Spring, I taught my annual AMS Art Workshop to Montessori Intern-Teachers at the Montessori Institute of Advanced Studies in Northern CA.
In preparing for this workshop, I am forever looking for Dr. Montessori's rationale for Art in the Montessori Primary Classroom.
Photo by the artists at Big Stock Photo
UNFORTUNATELY: I've found very little that Montessori wrote about Art with young children and this probably contributes to the general misconception that Art is not an important part of the Montessori Preschool classroom.
"Fortunately" by Remy Charlip at Amazon (one of my favorite books!)
FORTUNATELY: Dr. Montessori's artistic genius is seen in every area of the classroom with its emphasis on:
- color-coding as an inherent "control of error" in many activities
- beautiful & aesthetically pleasing lines as visual invitations
- puzzle shapes to manipulate and even draw designs from...
- textures to feel, categorize, and trace from toddlerhood on
- manipulatives that beautifully exemplify positive & negative space
- activities for exploring 3 dimensional form that also subtly teach geography, geometry, & algebra!
Elements of Art:
~ COLOR
~ LINE
~ SHAPE
~ TEXTURE
~ SPACE
~ FORM
This led me to the idea that perhaps Dr Montessori didn't write much about the importance of Art in the child's learning environment, because in the Montessori Classroom the elements of art are a continuously occurring phenomenon.
In the Montessori classroom, the elements of art are so integral and important that they are actually organic to the Montessori environment!
My Montessori Intern-Teachers and I had a really amazing experience at the workshop when we did an exercise of gathering Montessori materials from around the classroom that exemplified the Elements of Art!
Check out my other posts about Children's Art- Montessori Style! Just click on "Art" in the Header at the top of this page.
Here's one of my favorites:
Preschoolers as Painters from Art History!
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