Communicating and Learning Through Art

Want to help your child handle difficult experiences and emotions? Offer art materials and a time to use them consistently. Even at a young age, children are able to communicate more about their feelings through artistic expression than they can through words. Scientists now know that visual-art experiences create a bridge between the emotional (limbic) part of the brain and the thinking centers (neocortex). Creating art helps children harmonize different parts of their being and lower their stress.

Want your child to learn in a holistic way that brings academic and social-emotional learning to life? At the White Pony and Meher School, the arts have played a central role since our founding 48 years ago. It starts in preschool with “process art,” emphasizing creativity rather than cookie-cutter art projects. In elementary school, children’s stimulating academic learning is coupled with aesthetic expression. Adding art to their math pages heightens concentration and the absorption of concepts in a whole-brain, whole-heart way.

Thinking Like Artists

Then there is the art studio where Rhode Island School of Design graduate Lara Cannon, our elementary art teacher, lights the spark of creativity, teaching children to think like artists and develop impressive concentration, planning, and follow-through skills. Recently students from second through fifth grade spent about six weeks creating their own Mexican folk art figures called alebrijes. Lara says that one of the exciting things for the children was “knowing that they were working in the same way as ‘real artists’ who make these figures in Mexico.”

“Magical, Colorful” Art Show

This week Lara’s art program offers a peek into the work of the elementary art program, with an open house every day between 8 and noon in Room 16, featuring the magical, colorful world of these folk-art creatures, crafted by each of the participating students. Everyone is invited to drop in to partake in this visual feast. Lara shares a short YouTube video of this unique folk art form – making “beautiful monsters” from paper mache.

Artists at Work on Campus

Meher Schools students have always had the opportunity to observe real artists at work. Students have the benefit of watching Lara as she paints her map of the world on the playground or works on her painting for the staff room. They get to see our admissions director and accomplished artist Warren Wallace creating scenes in our Hallway Gallery. Warren is an alumnus who benefitted from the art infusion at all levels of the school and later studied art in college. Preschool teacher and artist Max Reif has painted murals in the yard behind Rooms 3, 4, and 5.

Fine-artist Diane Cobb coordinated our elementary art program for many years, and her exquisite renderings of children, fairies, animals, and fantasy figures populate many of the homework assignments and the birthday cards that we send to children.

Mythical Creatures Invade Art Class

Elementary students recently completed an elaborate project where they took inspiration from Mexican folk art sculptures called Alebrijes. The tradition of Alebrijes reportedly originated with an artist named Pedro Linares, who saw visions of the fantastical creatures in a fever dream.

Linares began sculpting the creatures from his dream, and his family continues the tradition to this day. Students learned in an interview with his grandson, Ricardo Linares, that he tries to incorporate three of the four elements (earth, fire, air and water) into his Alebrijes.

Each student’s sculpture includes some of the same elements. According to Linares, a spike or a viper tongue might represent fire, scales or crests might represent water, wings represent air, and any element of a land dwelling animal would represent earth. The students used these ideas as a guide in designing

their sculptures.

This process required a lot of patience, care, imagination and perseverance. These artists met this challenge and exceeded it! They should be very proud of themselves and their work.

Children and Gender Identity

“This is my purse,” my grandson said proudly when he was two, indicating a small cloth bag he was carrying with the strap draped over his shoulder. He loved walking through the room with his purse swinging by his side. At two, he didn’t know that purses are traditionally considered feminine. One day, when he showed this prized possession to a neighbor, the woman responded, “That’s not your purse, it’s your bag, your fishing bag.” That was the end of purse play.

Ironically, even during the period when this well-intended adult shifted my grandson’s play in a more “masculine” direction, the current fashion for businessmen was carrying leather bags to work, bags that looked identical to small purses.

Children are growing up in world where the old rules no longer hold, and the vocabulary about gender is constantly shifting and evolving. In the midst of change, there are countless pressures on children to conform to culturally defined gender stereotypes, and they come as corrections from adults and often from other children – “Boys don’t wear pink!” As they get older, additional pressures about how they express their identity will also be greatly influenced by social media.

Our children begin navigating the world of gender identity at a very young age, and develop concepts of what’s culturally expected by around age four. When they have to suppress certain behaviors and inclinations to conform to the current cultural rules for gender identity, they give up parts of themselves, parts that may never find expression.

For boys, it could be the love of carrying a beautiful bag or appearing in beautiful clothes, or the ability to show vulnerability or to choose friends who are girls. Girls often give up the ability to freely express anger, to feel empowered to speak up in a group, to gain physical strength and competitive athletic abilities.

In these changing times as society becomes more open, children have the chance to grow up to become more fully themselves. It’s important for the adults in their lives to grow in awareness of how gender identity develops and the role they can play in supporting children in ways that don’t enforce limiting stereotypes.

Here are some suggestions:

• Praise boys for expressing emotion and allowing vulnerability.

• Encourage boy-girl friendships. Many boys prefer playing with girls, but parents may feel awkward asking children of the opposite sex on playdates, even though this would aid positive friendships.

• Talk about adults in non-traditional careers, like female firefighters.

• Actively discuss gender stereotypes in books and in the media.

• Role-model nontraditional roles for adults in the home, like mom mowing the lawn or working on the car.

• Teach children to be kind and tolerant to everyone and to include those they think of as different.

Recently our staff participated in training from the organization Gender Spectrum. We plan to offer an online training for parents this spring. Parents might find it rewarding to seek training in the nuances children face in creating congruent gender expression in this age when everyone’s individuality can be fully embraced.