A charming paper cut of deer

   This old paper cut depicts deer and plant forms. 

Two different ways to mount your paper cuts and put them on display.

Fairy Friends Paper Cuts

    These fairies have butterfly wings and companions who play with them inside of a garden. Paper cuts also include flowers, grasses, birds and animal friends.

Paper cut of a very fuzzy cat

   This black silhouette of a fuzzy cat would make a sweet paper cut for those of you practicing your cutting technique. He even has a furry chin.

Here is an additional stencil of a furry cat as well...

A seated soldier paper cut

   This seated soldier is relaxing a bit with a pipe in his mouth and a bayonet in his left hand. He also wears a army cap and a backpack. The little paper cut is by Sir Robert Baden-Powell.

Early Childhood Education

This three year old (left)
and a five year old (right)
 are both learning to
 distinguish between shapes.
Both students are in stage 2
of early childhood learning.

      Early childhood education refers to the formal teaching of young children by people outside the family or in settings outside the home. "Early childhood" is usually defined as before the age of normal schooling – five years in most nations, though the U.S. National Association for the Education of Young Children defines "early childhood" as before the age of eight.

      Early Childhood education focuses on children learning through play, based on the research and philosophy of Jean Piaget. This belief is centered on the "power of play". It has been thought that children learn more efficiently and gain more knowledge through play-based activities such as dramatic play, art, and social games. This theory stems children's natural curiosity and tendencies to "make believe", mixing in educational lessons.

      Preschool education and kindergarten emphasize learning around the ages of 3–6 years. The terms "day care" and "child care" do not convey the educational aspects, although many childcare centers use more educational approaches. The distinction between childcare centers and kindergartens has all but disappeared in countries that require staff in different early childhood facilities to have a teaching qualification.

      Researchers and early childhood educators both view the parents as an integral part of the early childhood education process. Often educators refer to parents as the child's "first and best teacher".

The assignment shown above is not just
entertaining; it serves a very important
purpose in the development of small
motor skills. This four year old is
learning "how" to work with her fingers.
In the future, she will be asked to per-
form the same movements with a
pencil and a eraser.

      It is very important for parents to stay engaged in their child's learning process even if they are getting most of their education from a daycare, day home, school etc. The knowledge learned from a parent will be more cherished and remembered by a child then if any other person taught them, especially at an early age. Early childhood education is crucial to child development and should be entered into cautiously with someone you trust will benefit your child.

      Much of the first two years of life are spent in the creation of a child's first "sense of self"; most children are able to differentiate between themselves and others by their second year. This is a crucial part of the child's ability to determine how they should function in relation to other people. Early care must emphasize links to family, home culture, and home language by uniquely caring for each child.

      Children who lack sufficient nurturing, nutrition, interaction with a parent or caregiver, and stimulus during this crucial period may be left with developmental deficits, as has been reported in Russian and Romanian orphanages. Children must receive attention and affection to develop in a healthy manner. There is a false belief that more hours of formal education for a very young child confers greater benefits than a balance between formal education and family time. A systematic, international review suggests that the benefits of early childhood education come from the experience of participation; more than 2.5 hours a day does not greatly add to child development outcomes, especially when it detracts from other experiences and family contact.

      The Developmental Interaction Approach is based on the theories of Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, John Dewey, and Lucy Sprague Mitchell. The approach aims to involve children in acquiring competence via learning through discovery.

Very young students are positively motivated to learn by two basic instincts, pleasure and acceptance.
This little three year old is manipulating brightly colored bits of ribbon and fuzzy pom-poms in order
 to create a collage. She thinks that crayons, paper and glue are materials to play with. However,
 these art supplies will shape her ability to communicate and to also find pleasure in doing so.
 Teachers, parents and caregivers will encourage her productivity and voice their approval frequently
 in order to strengthen her will to manipulate the materials more and more as she matures.

        There are five developmental domains of childhood development:

1. Physical This section refers to how well your child is developing physically. You should keep an eye on their eyesight and how their motor skills are developing; they should be able to do small crafts and puzzles.
2. Social This section refers to the connections they've made with people and how well they are interacting with them.
3. Emotional This section refers to the emotional connections and amount of self-confidence they have.
4. Language Development This section refers to how well they communicate with people. Also how they represent their feelings and emotions.
5. Cognitive Skills This section refers to how the child lives in their everyday environment and how they solve everyday problems.

      There are three very basic, age appropriate, stages of early learning:

     1. Ages 1-3 Years Old: Learning through the discovery of knowledge:

• exploring the five senses
• kinesthetic memory
• discovery of basic motor skills
• identifying self and others
• experiments with making sounds and copying sounds

     2. Ages 3-5 Years Old: Learning though the processing of knowledge:

• identification, definition, categorization of knowledge
• development of basic motor skills
• social engagement with others i. e. “acceptable behaviors”
• learning to read faces, emotions 
• differentiate between good and bad conduct in oneself and others
• learning to make specific sound associated with language

     3. Ages 6-9 Years Old: Learning through manipulation of knowledge:

• fine tuning (controlling) large and small motor skills
• cause & effect social interaction and feelings (Cause and effect theory in academic subjects begins in grade 4; the children approx. 10 years of age.)
• Basic academic identification and applications: Integrated studies in multiple academic studies: math, science, art, history, literacy/reading and language (how do subjects compliment each other or relate to each other)
• working in a group to achieve a common goal
• learning to both speak and identify the language preferences of one's own people and also languages foreign to one's own people
• developing and adapting sophisticated memory cues, processes

Watch a candid and inspirational discussion with teachers from the Georgia Wolf Trap / Alliance Theatre community - including the social, academic, and emotional impact of Wolf Trap's early childhood arts education program. Parents can see how an "art rich" curriculum is developed for early learners.

• "Early Childhood Education Certification Schools".
• "Early Childhood Care and Education". UNESCO.
• "National Institute for Early Education Research".
• "Early Childhood Education". National Education Association.
• "Heckman Equation for Investing in Early Human Development".
• "International Montessori Index".

Power To Explore

      The learning center strategy uses ten basic learning centers to address the countless objectives of American early childhood classrooms, attempting to develop the student’s social, emotional, physical, cognitive, and aesthetic abilities.

      Encourage independent use of learning centers with these quick and easy tips:

1. One Define the space. Use throw rugs, bookcases, and curtains to help children contain their play within the center.
2. Two Take a room tour. Start the year by taking a few children at a time on a quick tour of the centers. Show them where materials are and how to put them away.
3. Three Keep materials accessible. Put current materials for each center in well-defined containers and marked shelves at children's eye level.
4. FourStore a few teacher materials in each center. It takes too much time to have to search for your own materials. Place your materials on a high shelf in each area.
5. Five Stock centers sparingly. It is easier for children to manage materials if there are just a few items there. As children learn how to easily use and put materials away, ask them to suggest what new items they would like to add to the centers.
6. Six Set up portable centers. Use plastic tubs or bins to create portable centers children can take to a private area to work and play.
7. Seven Make a cooperative center rules chart. At a group time, encourage children to suggest rules for working/playing in learning centers. If children are having difficulty, suggest issues such as sharing materials, respecting eachother's work, and putting materials away.
8. Eight Display children's work. Use bulletin boards, shelf backs, cardboard boxes or room dividers as a place to show children what others have done in the center.
9. Nine Set up a works-in-progress shelf. Sometimes children don't have enough time to complete a project in a center. Create a "safe place" where children can store ongoing projects.
10. Ten Create a take-home box. Set out a box near the door for children to place their finished projects for take-home at the end of the day

      There are nine basic learning centers in an early childhood/elementary classroom, each structured to expand the students’ experiences in a variety of meaningful and effective ways. Each center is constructed to encompass numerous objectives, including state and federal standards, school standards, and community standards.

Many church nurseries and preschools acquire large collections of Legos for early learners; when partnered with a nice table and a few extra trays this will serve as a very nice building block center.

       The learning centers approach focuses on student autonomy by giving each student an opportunity to explore his learning environment hands-on in a developmentally appropriate classroom. Teachers act as facilitators, providing materials and guidance, as well as planning discussions, activities, demonstrations, and reviews around the learning centers. These should never be used entirely as the only form of teaching in a classroom setting. That being said, learning centers may be integrated into the daily curriculum of a typical preschool or kindergarten.

1. The art center both personal and multi-cultural visual expression. This center also supports many opportunities for core subject integration such as: science, math, literacy, and history.
2. The building block center is essential in a pre-kindergarten classroom. Students recreate structural environments and explore concepts taught through math, geometry, and sturctural engineering in this center.
3. A discovery center is often used to introduce children to nature and/or science.
4. Dramatic play centers promote social interaction, role exploration, and abstract thinking.
5. Library centers or literacy centers focus the student's attention upon a particular theme for the week's studies through type and pictures.
6. The muscle center engages students participate in activities that exercise their bodies and develop large and small motor skills.
7. Music centers creates opportunities for children to cooperate in activities that stimulate creativity, listening, and language. Children learn the natural intonations and rhythms of language here.
8. The table games center teaches children to explore an established set of rules.
9. Writing centers integrate the development of fine motor skills with self expression, reading, spelling and art. 
10. In the manipulative center children play either alone or with each other using small toys to explore identification skills, math, and also story making. This center has similar attributes found in building block centers and dramatic play centers, except that the scale of the toys and environments is much smaller. The child's perception is no longer in the form of role play as an equal to his piers. The child becomes the manipulator of a story or of elements that they can control apart from social engagement if they choose to do so.

      Below is a video depicting a wide variety of sensory table ideas. Sensory tables are often introduced into preschool and kindergarten centers by early childhood educators. Children learn to associate ideas with those memories developed through tactile learning as well as the visual. Smells are also integrated into sensory tables although the examples shown here focus primarily on the tactile.

Video by MyCreativeTeacher.com. Children use their senses to understand the world around them. Engaging in valuable experiences is important for building their overall development. Who says sensory tables are only for preschools? Get your child his or her own sensory table so that you can encourage them to investigate, learn and discover! 

More Related Articles:

• Learning Centers: Why They're Important 
• Creating Learning Centers in the Classroom  
• Writing Centers - Setting Up the Classroom Series 
• Literacy Centers 
• The Block Center
• Outside the Lines: Creating an Art Center in Your Classroom
• 10 Simple Centers to Connect Art and the Curriculum
• The Nuts and Bolts of Discovery Centers
• Dramatic Play Centers
• Inventing Music Play Centers (pdf)

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Stages of Artistic Development

      Visit http://thevirtualinstructor.com for more art lessons like this one. Learn the stages of artistic development and how knowing them will help your drawing improvement.

      As young students develop, their art passes through a number of stages. It is thought that all children pass through these stages:

a.) Scribbling: From about their first birthday children achieve the fine motor control to handle a crayon. At first they scribble. The youngest child scribbles with a series of left and right motions, later up, down and then circular motions are added. The child appears to get considerable pleasure from watching the line or the colors appear. Often however children do not pay attention to the edges of the page and the lines go beyond the confines of the page. Children are often also interested in body painting and, given the opportunity, will draw on their hands or smear paint on their faces.
      Later, from about their second birthday, controlled scribbling starts. Children produce patterns of simple shapes: circles, crosses and star-bursts. They also become interested in arrangement and can produce simple collages of colored paper, or place stones in patterns. Once children have established controlled scribbling they begin to name their scribbles.

b.) Pre-symbolism: From about age three, the child begins to combine circles and lines to make simple figures. At first, people are drawn without a body and with arms emerging directly from the head. The eyes are often drawn large, filling up most of the face, and hands and feet are omitted. At this stage it may be impossible to identify the subject of the art without the child's help.
      Later drawings from this stage show figures drawn floating in space and sized to reflect the child's view of their importance. Most children at this age are not concerned with producing a realistic picture.

c.) Symbolism: In this stage of a child's development, they create a vocabulary of images. Thus when a child draws a picture of a cat, they will always draw the same basic image, perhaps modified (this cat has stripes that one has dots, for example). This stage of drawing begins at around age five. The basic shapes are called symbols or schema.
      Each child develops his/her own set of symbols, which are based on their understanding of what is being drawn rather than on observation. Each child's symbols are therefore unique to the child. By this age, most children develop a "person" symbol which has a properly defined head, trunk and limbs which are in some sort of rough proportion.
      Before this stage the objects that child would draw would appear to float in space, but at about five to six years old the child introduces a baseline with which to organize their space. This baseline is often a green line (representing grass) at the bottom of the paper. The figures stand on this line. Slightly older children may also add secondary baselines for background objects and a skyline to hold the sun and clouds.
      It is at this stage that cultural influences become more important. Children not only draw from life, but also copy images in their surroundings. They may draw copies of cartoons. Children also become more aware of the story-telling possibilities in a picture. The earliest understanding of a more realistic representation of space, such as using perspective, usually comes from copying.

d.) Realism: As children mature they begin to find their symbols limiting. They realize that their schema for a person is not flexible enough, and just doesn't look like the real thing. At this stage, which begins at nine or ten years old, the child will lend greater importance to whether the drawing looks like the object being drawn.
      This can be a frustrating time for some children, as their aspirations outstrip their abilities and knowledge. Some children give up on drawing almost entirely. However others become skilled, and it is at this stage that formal artistic training can benefit the child most. The baseline is dropped and the child can learn to use rules such as perspective to organize space better. Story-telling also becomes more refined and children will start to use formal devices such as the comic strip.