I was clearing off my desk yesterday and found a pile of scrap paper left behind by kindergarten students’ collage making. There was something intriguing about the aesthetic of these odd pieces of paper—with their awkward cuts and imperfect edges. I hopped over to the photocopier and scanned them in. Five minutes later, an impromptu eBook was born. [ ](http://gollmar.org/media/SCRAP eBook.pdf) I’d like to return to this idea again at some point....
Without launching into a detailed description, Visual Thinking Strategies is a great way to get learners of all ages and abilities to talk about and learn about visual art together. In fact, seeing it in action–seeing children as young as kindergarten or first grade quickly start to develop their visual literacy–is so inspiring that it makes me wish there were an analogous tool in music education. What would it take to adapt VTS’ approach of close looking to close listening?...
I’m beginning to think that this question is more interesting than the question that I posed back in July, “How is experiencing a work of art like reading?” (A question that I can’t claim to have come up with on my own, as it is a guiding question behind Words & Pictures.) This question asks us to consider the objectness of a work of art. As Olga Hubard remarks in “Complete Engagement: Embodied Response in Art Museum Education” (2007), “Unlike the contents of written texts, artworks present themselves as physical (or virtual) entities that exist in the same space as we do....
A question has been nagging at my mind for a few months. I don’t know when it crept up on me–perhaps after a guided visit with kindergarteners that didn’t go as well as I had hoped–but I found myself questioning whom the art museum is designed for. With its stark, white walls, challenging label text, and lack of multisensory stimulation, it’s certainly an environment that would be alien to many young children....
For the five-year-old, art is life and life is art. For the six-year-old, life is life and art is art. The first school-year is a watershed in the child’s history: a trauma. R. Murray Schafer, introduction to “The Rhinoceros in the Classroom” Schafer includes these words in a list of reminders to himself and other educators. He isn’t simply observing that five- and six-year-olds experience art differently; he is calling upon educators to preserve the five-year-old’s sensibility....