Hello,

I’m developing an approach to early childhood art education through artists’ lenses, rather than primarily through developmental-age-based expectations or collections of “fun art activities.” I’m interested in how artists’ ways of seeing, thinking, and working with materials might offer educators different ways of understanding children’s artistic encounters.

As an early childhood practitioner, what would you want or need from a resource like this? What challenges or questions around children, art, and materials would you most want it to address?

Thanks for all your opinions!

• What’s missing from early childhood art education resources?
• Beyond “fun art activities”: What do early childhood educators actually need?
• Could artists’ ways of thinking offer something different to early childhood art education?
• Preschool art education through artists’ lenses — would this be useful to practitioners?

Hello,

I’m developing an approach to early childhood art education through artists’ lenses, rather than primarily through developmental-age-based expectations or collections of “fun art activities.” I’m interested in how artists’ ways of seeing, thinking, and working with materials might offer educators different ways of understanding children’s artistic encounters.

As an early childhood practitioner, what would you want or need from a resource like this? What challenges or questions around children, art, and materials would you most want it to address?

Thanks for all your opinions!

• What’s missing from early childhood art education resources?
• Beyond “fun art activities”: What do early childhood educators actually need?
• Could artists’ ways of thinking offer something different to early childhood art education?
• Preschool art education through artists’ lenses — would this be useful to practitioners?

Hello!

I have an MFA in Fine Arts and an MA in Early Childhood Education, and I currently work as an early childhood educator and researcher with a particular interest in art education.

I am developing an approach to early childhood art education through artists’ lenses, rather than primarily through developmental-age-based expectations or collections of “fun art activities.”

I’m interested in how professional artists’ ways of seeing, thinking, questioning, and working with materials might offer different possibilities for young children’s encounters with art.

For example, rather than introducing an artist mainly through biography and then creating an activity inspired by their work, I’m exploring questions, such as:

What can an artist’s practice help us notice differently about children’s own encounters with materials, space, objects, and one another?

I’d really value perspectives from museum educators:

What do you feel is currently missing when museums engage preschool-aged children with art?

What kinds of resources would actually be useful to you—artist-based inquiry guides, material explorations, open-ended questions, documentation examples, connections between contemporary art and early childhood practice, or something else?

I’m especially interested in hearing about challenges you encounter and resources you wish existed.

Thanks, everyone, for your advice!

Hello,

I’m developing an approach to early childhood art education through artists’ lenses, rather than primarily through developmental-age-based expectations or collections of “fun art activities.” I’m interested in how artists’ ways of seeing, thinking, and working with materials might offer educators different ways of understanding children’s artistic encounters.

As an early childhood practitioner, what would you want or need from a resource like this? What challenges or questions around children, art, and materials would you most want it to address?

Thanks for all your opinions!

• What’s missing from early childhood art education resources?
• Beyond “fun art activities”: What do early childhood educators actually need?
• Could artists’ ways of thinking offer something different to early childhood art education?
• Preschool art education through artists’ lenses — would this be useful to practitioners?

Hello,

I’m developing an approach to early childhood art education through artists’ lenses, rather than primarily through developmental-age-based expectations or collections of “fun art activities.” I’m interested in how artists’ ways of seeing, thinking, and working with materials might offer educators different ways of understanding children’s artistic encounters.

As an early childhood practitioner, what would you want or need from a resource like this? What challenges or questions around children, art, and materials would you most want it to address?

Thanks for all your opinions!

• What’s missing from early childhood art education resources?
• Beyond “fun art activities”: What do early childhood educators actually need?
• Could artists’ ways of thinking offer something different to early childhood art education?
• Preschool art education through artists’ lenses — would this be useful to practitioners?

Children's Drawing: An Elephant Walking Around the Zoo

During a recent morning meeting, our conversation turned to a teacher’s upcoming journey to a Danish forest school—a renowned beacon of nature-based early childhood pedagogy. It was within this space of shared anticipation that a child anxiously questioned how the children there would survive alongside forest animals that "attack people and eat our lunch." By framing animal behavior around the high stakes of survival and conflict, the child exposed a deeper, systemic fracture in modern childhood socialization: the weaponization of the "wild" through media. Urban children do not inherently fear the forest; they are conditioned to do so. In the absence of direct, sensory entanglements with local ecosystems, commercial media and moralizing children’s literature step in to colonize the void. From the big bad wolves of folklore to the cartoonish, resource-stealing antagonists of modern animation, our information ecosystem consistently frames the wilderness through a lens of conflict, consumption, and threat. This moment forces us to confront how this defensive, adversarial posture toward the living world is actively constructed. Instead of viewing animals as cohabitants or ecological neighbors, children are trained by cultural narratives to see them as active adversaries—trespassers waiting to breach human boundaries and steal human resources. By sanitizing the city and sensationalizing the woods, dominant media breeds a form of ecological paranoia. The tragedy of this child’s anxiety is that it reveals how effectively pre-established knowledge references can colonize a child’s imagination, transforming a peaceful Danish forest into a hostile battleground before they ever set foot among the trees.

Children's Drawing: An Elephant Walking Around the Zoo

Hello! I am an independent curatorial scholar working through critical, posthumanist, and new materialist lenses toward transformative early childhood art education. My research explores child-led inquiry, material agency, and non-human intra-actions within pedagogical and exhibition spaces. I’m currently building an open-access lab platform and journal to share critical relational encounters and collaborate with fellow thinkers.

During a recent morning meeting, our conversation turned to a teacher’s upcoming journey to a Danish forest school—a renowned beacon of nature-based early childhood pedagogy. It was within this space of shared anticipation that a child anxiously questioned how the children there would survive alongside forest animals that "attack people and eat our lunch." By framing animal behavior around the high stakes of survival and conflict, the child exposed a deeper, systemic fracture in modern childhood socialization: the weaponization of the "wild" through media. Urban children do not inherently fear the forest; they are conditioned to do so. In the absence of direct, sensory entanglements with local ecosystems, commercial media and moralizing children’s literature step in to colonize the void. From the big bad wolves of folklore to the cartoonish, resource-stealing antagonists of modern animation, our information ecosystem consistently frames the wilderness through a lens of conflict, consumption, and threat. This moment forces us to confront how this defensive, adversarial posture toward the living world is actively constructed. Instead of viewing animals as cohabitants or ecological neighbors, children are trained by cultural narratives to see them as active adversaries—trespassers waiting to breach human boundaries and steal human resources. By sanitizing the city and sensationalizing the woods, dominant media breeds a form of ecological paranoia. The tragedy of this child’s anxiety is that it reveals how effectively pre-established knowledge references can colonize a child’s imagination, transforming a peaceful Danish forest into a hostile battleground before they ever set foot among the trees.

How are non-human elements and ecological encounters shaping art-making in your own pedagogical or curatorial practice? Let's discuss in the comments below!

Children's Drawing: An Elephant Walking Around the Zoo

Hello! I am an independent curatorial scholar working through critical, posthumanist, and new materialist lenses toward transformative early childhood art education. My research explores child-led inquiry, material agency, and non-human intra-actions within pedagogical and exhibition spaces. I’m currently building an open-access lab platform and journal to share critical relational encounters and collaborate with fellow thinkers.

During a recent morning meeting, our conversation turned to a teacher’s upcoming journey to a Danish forest school—a renowned beacon of nature-based early childhood pedagogy. It was within this space of shared anticipation that a child anxiously questioned how the children there would survive alongside forest animals that "attack people and eat our lunch." By framing animal behavior around the high stakes of survival and conflict, the child exposed a deeper, systemic fracture in modern childhood socialization: the weaponization of the "wild" through media. Urban children do not inherently fear the forest; they are conditioned to do so. In the absence of direct, sensory entanglements with local ecosystems, commercial media and moralizing children’s literature step in to colonize the void. From the big bad wolves of folklore to the cartoonish, resource-stealing antagonists of modern animation, our information ecosystem consistently frames the wilderness through a lens of conflict, consumption, and threat. This moment forces us to confront how this defensive, adversarial posture toward the living world is actively constructed. Instead of viewing animals as cohabitants or ecological neighbors, children are trained by cultural narratives to see them as active adversaries—trespassers waiting to breach human boundaries and steal human resources. By sanitizing the city and sensationalizing the woods, dominant media breeds a form of ecological paranoia. The tragedy of this child’s anxiety is that it reveals how effectively pre-established knowledge references can colonize a child’s imagination, transforming a peaceful Danish forest into a hostile battleground before they ever set foot among the trees.

How are non-human elements and ecological encounters shaping art-making in your own pedagogical or curatorial practice? Let's discuss in the comments below!

Children's drawing: An Elephant Walking Around the Zoo

During a recent morning meeting, our conversation turned to a teacher’s upcoming journey to a Danish forest school—a renowned beacon of nature-based early childhood pedagogy. It was within this space of shared anticipation that a child anxiously questioned how the children there would survive alongside forest animals that "attack people and eat our lunch." By framing animal behavior around the high stakes of survival and conflict, the child exposed a deeper, systemic fracture in modern childhood socialization: the weaponization of the "wild" through media. Urban children do not inherently fear the forest; they are conditioned to do so. In the absence of direct, sensory entanglements with local ecosystems, commercial media and moralizing children’s literature step in to colonize the void. From the big bad wolves of folklore to the cartoonish, resource-stealing antagonists of modern animation, our information ecosystem consistently frames the wilderness through a lens of conflict, consumption, and threat. This moment forces us to confront how this defensive, adversarial posture toward the living world is actively constructed. Instead of viewing animals as cohabitants or ecological neighbors, children are trained by cultural narratives to see them as active adversaries—trespassers waiting to breach human boundaries and steal human resources. By sanitizing the city and sensationalizing the woods, dominant media breeds a form of ecological paranoia. The tragedy of this child’s anxiety is that it reveals how effectively pre-established knowledge references can colonize a child’s imagination, transforming a peaceful Danish forest into a hostile battleground before they ever set foot among the trees.

How are non-human elements and ecological encounters shaping art-making in your own pedagogical or curatorial practice? Let's discuss in the comments below!

Children's Drawing: An Elephant Walking Around the Zoo

Hello! I am an independent curatorial scholar working through critical, posthumanist, and new materialist lenses toward transformative early childhood art education. My research explores child-led inquiry, material agency, and more-than-human intra-actions within pedagogical and exhibition spaces. I’m currently building an open-access lab platform and journal to share critical relational encounters and collaborate with fellow thinkers.

During a recent morning meeting, our conversation turned to a teacher’s upcoming journey to a Danish forest school—a renowned beacon of nature-based early childhood pedagogy. It was within this space of shared anticipation that a child anxiously questioned how the children there would survive alongside forest animals that "attack people and eat our lunch." By framing animal behavior around the high stakes of survival and conflict, the child exposed a deeper, systemic fracture in modern childhood socialization: the weaponization of the "wild" through media. Urban children do not inherently fear the forest; they are conditioned to do so. In the absence of direct, sensory entanglements with local ecosystems, commercial media and moralizing children’s literature step in to colonize the void. From the big bad wolves of folklore to the cartoonish, resource-stealing antagonists of modern animation, our information ecosystem consistently frames the wilderness through a lens of conflict, consumption, and threat. This moment forces us to confront how this defensive, adversarial posture toward the living world is actively constructed. Instead of viewing animals as cohabitants or ecological neighbors, children are trained by cultural narratives to see them as active adversaries—trespassers waiting to breach human boundaries and steal human resources. By sanitizing the city and sensationalizing the woods, dominant media breeds a form of ecological paranoia. The tragedy of this child’s anxiety is that it reveals how effectively pre-established knowledge references can colonize a child’s imagination, transforming a peaceful Danish forest into a hostile battleground before they ever set foot among the trees.

How are non-human elements and ecological encounters shaping art-making in your own pedagogical or curatorial practice? Let's discuss in the comments below!

Children's Drawing: An Elephant Walking Around the Zoo

Hello everyone! I am an independent curatorial researcher working at the intersection of museum pedagogy, new materialism, and critical early childhood art inquiry. My work explores how museum spaces, material agency, and more-than-human encounters shape relational inquiry and collaborative engagement in cultural settings. I’m currently building an open-access lab platform and journal to document these relational encounters and collaborate with fellow museum professionals.

During a recent morning meeting, our conversation turned to a teacher’s upcoming journey to a Danish forest school—a renowned beacon of nature-based early childhood pedagogy. It was within this space of shared anticipation that a child anxiously questioned how the children there would survive alongside forest animals that "attack people and eat our lunch." By framing animal behavior around the high stakes of survival and conflict, the child exposed a deeper, systemic fracture in modern childhood socialization: the weaponization of the "wild" through media. Urban children do not inherently fear the forest; they are conditioned to do so. In the absence of direct, sensory entanglements with local ecosystems, commercial media and moralizing children’s literature step in to colonize the void. From the big bad wolves of folklore to the cartoonish, resource-stealing antagonists of modern animation, our information ecosystem consistently frames the wilderness through a lens of conflict, consumption, and threat. This moment forces us to confront how this defensive, adversarial posture toward the living world is actively constructed. Instead of viewing animals as cohabitants or ecological neighbors, children are trained by cultural narratives to see them as active adversaries—trespassers waiting to breach human boundaries and steal human resources. By sanitizing the city and sensationalizing the woods, dominant media breeds a form of ecological paranoia. The tragedy of this child’s anxiety is that it reveals how effectively pre-established knowledge references can colonize a child’s imagination, transforming a peaceful Danish forest into a hostile battleground before they ever set foot among the trees.

How are non-human elements and ecological encounters shaping art-making in your own pedagogical or curatorial practice? Let's discuss in the comments below!

Children's Drawing: An Elephant Walking Around the Zoo

Hello! I am an independent curatorial scholar working through critical, posthumanist, and new materialist lenses toward transformative early childhood art education. My research explores child-led inquiry, material agency, and non-human intra-actions within pedagogical and exhibition spaces. I’m currently building an open-access lab platform and journal to share critical relational encounters and collaborate with fellow thinkers.

During a recent morning meeting, our conversation turned to a teacher’s upcoming journey to a Danish forest school—a renowned beacon of nature-based early childhood pedagogy. It was within this space of shared anticipation that a child anxiously questioned how the children there would survive alongside forest animals that "attack people and eat our lunch." By framing animal behavior around the high stakes of survival and conflict, the child exposed a deeper, systemic fracture in modern childhood socialization: the weaponization of the "wild" through media. Urban children do not inherently fear the forest; they are conditioned to do so. In the absence of direct, sensory entanglements with local ecosystems, commercial media and moralizing children’s literature step in to colonize the void. From the big bad wolves of folklore to the cartoonish, resource-stealing antagonists of modern animation, our information ecosystem consistently frames the wilderness through a lens of conflict, consumption, and threat. This moment forces us to confront how this defensive, adversarial posture toward the living world is actively constructed. Instead of viewing animals as cohabitants or ecological neighbors, children are trained by cultural narratives to see them as active adversaries—trespassers waiting to breach human boundaries and steal human resources. By sanitizing the city and sensationalizing the woods, dominant media breeds a form of ecological paranoia. The tragedy of this child’s anxiety is that it reveals how effectively pre-established knowledge references can colonize a child’s imagination, transforming a peaceful Danish forest into a hostile battleground before they ever set foot among the trees.

How are non-human elements and ecological encounters shaping art-making in your own pedagogical or curatorial practice? Let's discuss in the comments below!

Children's drawing: An Elephant Walking Around the Zoo

During a recent morning meeting, our conversation turned to a teacher’s upcoming journey to a Danish forest school—a renowned beacon of nature-based early childhood pedagogy. It was within this space of shared anticipation that a child anxiously questioned how the children there would survive alongside forest animals that "attack people and eat our lunch." By framing animal behavior around the high stakes of survival and conflict, the child exposed a deeper, systemic fracture in modern childhood socialization: the weaponization of the "wild" through media. Urban children do not inherently fear the forest; they are conditioned to do so. In the absence of direct, sensory entanglements with local ecosystems, commercial media and moralizing children’s literature step in to colonize the void. From the big bad wolves of folklore to the cartoonish, resource-stealing antagonists of modern animation, our information ecosystem consistently frames the wilderness through a lens of conflict, consumption, and threat. This moment forces us to confront how this defensive, adversarial posture toward the living world is actively constructed. Instead of viewing animals as cohabitants or ecological neighbors, children are trained by cultural narratives to see them as active adversaries—trespassers waiting to breach human boundaries and steal human resources. By sanitizing the city and sensationalizing the woods, dominant media breeds a form of ecological paranoia. The tragedy of this child’s anxiety is that it reveals how effectively pre-established knowledge references can colonize a child’s imagination, transforming a peaceful Danish forest into a hostile battleground before they ever set foot among the trees.

Children's Drawing: An Elephant Walking Around the Zoo

During a recent morning meeting, our conversation turned to a teacher’s upcoming journey to a Danish forest school—a renowned beacon of nature-based early childhood pedagogy. It was within this space of shared anticipation that a child anxiously questioned how the children there would survive alongside forest animals that "attack people and eat our lunch." By framing animal behavior around the high stakes of survival and conflict, the child exposed a deeper, systemic fracture in modern childhood socialization: the weaponization of the "wild" through media. Urban children do not inherently fear the forest; they are conditioned to do so. In the absence of direct, sensory entanglements with local ecosystems, commercial media and moralizing children’s literature step in to colonize the void. From the big bad wolves of folklore to the cartoonish, resource-stealing antagonists of modern animation, our information ecosystem consistently frames the wilderness through a lens of conflict, consumption, and threat. This moment forces us to confront how this defensive, adversarial posture toward the living world is actively constructed. Instead of viewing animals as cohabitants or ecological neighbors, children are trained by cultural narratives to see them as active adversaries—trespassers waiting to breach human boundaries and steal human resources. By sanitizing the city and sensationalizing the woods, dominant media breeds a form of ecological paranoia. The tragedy of this child’s anxiety is that it reveals how effectively pre-established knowledge references can colonize a child’s imagination, transforming a peaceful Danish forest into a hostile battleground before they ever set foot among the trees.

“

The Day We Reimagined the Titanic Together

I know children often open philosophical and relational questions that invite adults to reconsider certainty, fixed meanings, and even our own understandings of becoming. On Monday morning, during our conversation about reimagining the Titanic together, I was reminded again that children’s conversations are not “small talk.” One child wondered.“If people rebuild the Titanic with some of the original broken pieces, and they can come back to it…” Another child responded:

“That is not the Titanic! It’s different!”

The conversation slowly moved beyond the ship itself, wondering about identity, memory, transformation, and change.

Can something remain itself while continuously becoming something else?

Reimagined the Titanic?

Can we still call it the Titanic?