Methods, Approaches, and Inspirations

Inspired by Lanier, I envisioned myself talking about art just as much as I allow my students production time. I envisioned group analysis of abstract expressionist paintings, compare and contrasts exercises of Rockwell’s Easter Morning, 1959 with Goya’s Charles IV of Spain and his family, 1800, historic connections between the Trayvon Martin, Rodney King, and hoodies. Contemporary controversial artists such as Banksy and Andres Serrano just to spark debate, and a series of really exiting subject matter that would be great for a college environment or a perhaps junior high setting.

The reality is that I have landed a job at a Montessori school and I will be teaching art to a lower elementary group ages 6 through 9. Yay! I have read plenty of Olivia Gude to feel exited and inspired about this age group as well, but given my lack of experience in teaching I am feeling pretty lost.

 On a Montessori classroom, art lessons emphasize process, independence, and integration with all other content areas. Students are encouraged to think critically and work collaboratively. The curriculum is design for the understanding of abstract, universal concepts such as equity, freedom, and justice. Teachers are meant to serve as guides allowing children to find their own strengths. Great! It is the child who will decide when to work on clay or chalk, and for as long as he desire. This is true of all activities in a Montessori classroom.

What I have so far gathered from the preparatory educational courses at UF, Key art understandings and inquiry should guide lesson plans which also should include the four areas of art education: Art criticism, aesthetics, art history and art production. Can I use a DBAE model on a Montessori classroom? Or will I have to rely on a more traditional approach o art education that emphasizes art production?

Art in the Montessori Classroom cont.

Maria Montessori instructed teachers to hang real works of art in the classroom environment. They should be hung at the child's eye level and changed frequently. She believed the rooms should be well kept, clean and organized. The children can decorate the classroom with fresh flowers, plants, and other objects found in nature such as driftwood, rocks, and shells.

The aim of art education in Montessori classrooms is to develop the hand as a tool of the mind. The Montessori method in general emphasizes the training of the hand. There is no drawing or modeling lesson, there are exercises of practical life that are artistic in nature. These are activities that include cutting, weaving, sewing, use of stationery tools, stencils, etc. Children are free to select the materials from the art shelf. They have the responsibility to manage and care for the material and their work environment. Children are encouraged to research and prepare their work independently. A group project may be placed at a workstation for a period of time and children are free to add to it as they feel like it.

Maria Montessori believed that a child would engage in the activities that she need it and was ready for, otherwise she would get distracted or tired of it.

"The development of character (is) a natural sequence of events resulting from the child's own individual efforts, which have no reference to any extraneous factors, but depend on his own creative energy" (The Absorbent Mind)

The child is to work with no interference so not to interrupt her inner drive for expression. Pictures can be completely expressive and abstract; there is no need for verbal explanations.

"The teacher can find a very good model for her behavior in the way a good valet looks after his master. He keeps his master's dressing table tidy, puts the brushes in place, but he does not tell his master when to use the brushes" (The Absorbent Mind)

Some Montessori schools do not display the children’s work because the child might feel that the work is complete and will stop the exploration. The teacher does not need to say anything to the child unless it is technical such as would you like me to show you how to clean up or would you like to do another collage?

Famous paintings can be introduced to children as young as two years old through a collection of postcard sized prints. They can touch them and pass it around, match and recognize styles and techniques, and explore freely without adult commentaries. Discussions include questions such as "Where is that road going?" "Why do the trees at the top look so small compared to the ones at the bottom?" "Where would you like to be in this painting?" "How does it make you feel?" "Does it look the same close up as it does far away?"

A diverse array of styles should be available so as to exemplify to children that art has personal expression and help free a child from anxieties about their own work.

Art in the Montessori Classroom

          In the Montessori classroom all children’s activities are considered their work. Grace and courtesy are fundamental aspects of the Montessori code of conduct. Montessori lessons consist of the teacher’s demonstration of how the materials are used. The child is then free to explore the materials on her own. If the child begins to misuse the materials, she is redirected to a different workstation. 

            All Montessori work emphasizes the process. Art can be integrated into all the areas of the Montessori curriculum. Language activities include story and calendar illustration. In Mathematics geometric insets teach the shapes, exercising eye and hand for writing while making lines and creating designs. Theme-related work such as solar system resist painting and issue transfer butterfly wings. Drawing or painting maps, making play dough continent maps, and later, detailed clay relief maps in Geography work. Exploring other countries and cultures. The sensory area explores color theory, geometric shapes and visual relationships. Children become familiar with famous artists by matching, identifying, and categorizing their works. Methodical demonstrations and opportunities to execute practical life exercises teach children how to focus and carry out a complete process in sequential steps from beginning to end. A step-by-step demonstration is given for art processes such as dipping a paintbrush, washing a brush, gluing, washing a glue lid and glue brush. Once the art lesson or demonstration has been given, the child has the freedom to create as long as the art process is being used correctly and materials are not being misused or abused. The Montessori classroom includes an art area where children can find a selection of basic art materials always available.

           

Maria Montessori on Creativity

 “A sensitive soul, an eye that sees and a hand that obeys’.

Dr Maria Montessori believed that to understand the child's tendencies, with the purpose of education in mind, we must see man in correlation with his surrounding environment and how his adaptation to it is created. She found that the development of children’s creativity unfolds with the child's cognitive development, from sensori-motor intelligence to intuitive thought, to concrete operations, and finally to formal operations.

The development of creativity is then a spontaneous process that occurs as the child's intelligence unfolds through his interaction with a prepared environment, evolving through a long process of cognitive development where the absorption of reality is the starting point. Art education in a Montessori classroom involves the understanding that the child’s imagination and creativity is an inborn power that develops along with his mental capacities and is based on his interactions with the environment.

The environment must have order, harmony and beauty that is based on reality so the child can develop a realistic and ordered perception of its own life. This environment encourages children to select creative endeavors and processes necessary for the total development – intellectual, artistic, emotional, and physical. The capability to select these processes requires attention and concentration, autonomy and independence, and openness to truth and reality.

In order to develop creativity the child needs freedom to choose his activities, have enough time to problem solve and form ideas, find relevant subjects available, and opportunity to share his discoveries and accomplishments. Judgment and authority inhibit the creative impulse.

Dr. Montessori found that the making of the personality, the construction of the child's self is the most significant of the creative endeavors. The environment is the font of recourses that sparks the creative process. In the Montessori classroom the child's integration is an assimilation of self through the mastery of the environment with full application of the mind, the eye and the hand.