Process Art

I think it is very important to balance activities for early childhood students. We work very hard on academic subjects, but I also offer activities to express themselves in other ways. I have an art/sensory area in my room. It includes a tall wood table, where students stand to complete activities. I have been really excited about offering process art activities in this area. Giving them an opportunity to practice a process results in improved work on larger projects.

Process art, simply put, is art that focuses on a process instead of a product. I use this when I want my student to pick up on an art technique instead of trying to recreate my work. This always makes me think about the trend of "paint parties," where people come together and follow step by step instructions to create a piece of art. While this is likely a fun activity for all, it is not really teaching the participants to create. The end products are highly similar with little variation. While following step by step directions is an important life skill, I want my students to be creators, particularly when making art! I feel that there is a lot of transfer of this creativity to their project work, which makes these activities extremely important to me.

My current art center has blue, yellow, and white paint, along with brushes, bottle caps of different sizes, and many colors of paper. Students select their own color of background paper. We are working to mix colors to make shades of green, so they mix the provided colors to make their own shades. They paint the caps and use them to stamp circles on their paper in any design they wish. It has been fun for me to see what they do! Some meticulously line their circles up in rows and make their green shades get progressively lighter or darker. Others randomnly stamp their circles without pattern, often overlapping to create new shapes and shades. Many students ask if they can complete another paper when they finish the first--which is a sign of a successful activity in my book.

Here is an example of one student's work--she made several green shades and tones, but chose to keep her circles similar in size with no intentional overlapping:

Here is a great link to show many ideas for process art. Click here.