About the Book
Typical art resources for teachers offer discrete art activities, but these don't carry children or teachers into the practice of using the languages of art. This resource offers guidance for teachers to create space, time, and intentional processes for children's exploration and learning to use art for asking questions, offering insights, exploring hypotheses, and examining experiences from unfamiliar perspectives. Inspired by an approach to teaching and learning born in Reggio Emilia, Italy, The Language of Art, Second Edition, includes: A new art exploration for teachers to gain experience before implementing the practice with children. Advice on setting up a studio space for art and inquiry. Suggestions on documenting children's developing fluency with art media and its use in inquiry Inspiring photographs and ideas to show you how inquiry-based practices can work in any early childhood setting.
About the Author :
Ann Pelo is a teacher educator, program consultant, and author whose primary work focuses on reflective pedagogical practice, social justice and ecological teaching and learning and the art of mentoring. Currently, Ann consults early childhood educators and administrators in North America, Australia, and New Zealand on inquiry-based teaching and learning, pedagogical leadership, and the necessary place of ecological identity in children’s – and adults’ – lives. She is the author of several books including the first edition of The Language of Art and co-author of That’s Not Fair: A Teacher’s Guide to Activism with Young Children.
Review :
I often wonder whether new editions are worth reading, especially when the first one is a winner. YES, YES! This is a must have second edition of an invaluable book.
While this new edition continues to offer teachers a wealth of examples for using art media as tools for inquiry, you’ll find deeper understandings of how the language of art expands children’s ability to pay attention to details, communicate, participate in conversations about ideas, question, collaborate, and take new perspectives. And, you’ll have further help thinking through the teacher’s role in this process, with suggestions to guide your experimentation, your documentation, and reflections on what you are learning.
And, while the language of art indeed cultivates 21st Century Skills, we must heed Pelo’s important reminder that in this prescriptive and assessment driven era, “Art has many purposes, but serving as a conduit for assessment is not one…We can take up art as an expression of our participation in life.”
—Margie Carter, co-founder, Harvest Resources Associates, co-author best selling Redleaf books, The Visionary Director, Designs for Living and Learning, The Art of Awareness, and Learning Together with Young Children
This splendid book contains a wide range of suggestions for introducing young children to paint, drawing materials, clay, loose parts, and wire as resources for aesthetic discovery. It is structured in a useful way for each material—going from getting launched, setting up, exploring and creating, cleaning up, and finally documentation and display. My favorite aspect was the discussion of the teacher’s role as partner and guide, with suggested words the teacher might easily use. These modeled an open, sparkling, respectful, complex, and multifaceted way of interacting with children.
—Carolyn Pope Edwards, EdD, Cather Professor Emeritus, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
"Ann Pelo's The Language of Art: Inquiry-Based Studio Practices in Early Childhood Settings appears in its updated second edition to provide a set of Reggio-based principles and practices for teachers in the arts. Pair a powerful theoretical framework with a curriculum approach that uses the studio arts environment to explore texture, color, shapes, and different perspectives and you have an early education title that shows how studios can be created to encourage young artists to absorb some art basics."
—California Bookwatch, The Education Shelf
