Reynolda House Museum of American Art is pleased to share our new series, Pop-Up Studio for kids. The museum's Manager of School and Family Learning Julia Hood offers innovative ideas for home-based art activities for kids.
Pop-Up Studio: Mail Art, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 illustrates how to send a letter to someone special the old-fashioned way through the addition of stationary and the use of a creative envelope.
I had a chance to interview Julia to learn more.
Why did you create the Pop-Up Studio for Kids?
We first created Reynolda Pop-Up Studios several years ago to offer different digital connections with our regular audience and to hopefully be able to reach new audiences. It allowed us to take projects we've done in family programs and share instructions and ideas with families unable to attend one-time workshops with limited registration. When the Museum temporarily closed due to the pandemic, it was one clear way we could continue to provide activities for kids and families now stuck at home.
Why is sending a letter not only fun and creative, but also an important skill?
I have long been a proponent of letter writing. First, it is a way of being socially connected that spans time. It doesn't require immediate response and it allows someone to be personally reflective and develop a monologue that offers something of one's life to a trusted reader and then invites the same in return. It is slow and it is personal. Second, the way the writing brain works when you are writing by hand is different from when you type onto a screen. There is something in the physicality of writing that slows the mind and hones the ideas. Third, for children especially, it offers a very practical, relevant method for practicing writing: they are working on manual writing skills (plus sentence construction, spelling etc.) while having a very clear audience for their writing--an audience they have chosen.
What other skills can arts and crafts teach kids?
At a very basic level, art making and craft skills develop manual dexterity and for young learners, prepare for literacy (holding a paintbrush and developing those gripping muscles helps prepare later for writing letters). Conceptually, you are also learning how images express ideas. Looking carefully at fine art also helps develop visual literacy--how we can understand and evaluate the images presented to us. Some of the research articulating the benefits of art making focuses on how it involves design thinking. By making art, kids develop problem solving skills and can learn that it is OK to make mistakes; if you keep trying you can improve your skills (or your idea, etc.) The National Art Education Association researches and collects information related to this very question and so I attach two resources, including this excerpt below from their Case Statement:
" WHY ART EDUCATION MATTERS
• Research at various grade levels shows that learning in the visual arts is linked to the development of creative thinking skills such as adaptability, flexibility, imagination, fluency, originality, elaboration, and abstractness—skills that employers need.2
• Studies find that art education develops students’ critical thinking skills, such as comparison, hypothesizing, and critiquing—skills that are essential to a person’s ability to apply knowledge and visualize solutions.
• Research shows that visual art studio classes help students develop the habits for sustained focus, imagination, close observation, and articulation of their decision-making process. "
2 ArtsEdSearch, http://www.
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