A Grace-ful way to art

Sofia Alvarez, 4, painted a colorful picture.

Courtesy Grace Playschool

Five-year-old Preston Waters expressed his creativity through art at Lynbrook’s Grace Playschool.

Courtesy Grace Playschool

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Inspiration. Creativity. Say these words to an adult and they’ll most likely provide a definition or give an example to clarify the meanings.

But ask a child what is inspiring and he or she might not understand the question. Ask a child what it means to be creative, and here too, you might be met with a stumbling block. However, if you give a child the tools needed, the end result will be one filled with inspiration and creativity. At Grace Playschool in Lynbrook, children ages three and older are showing their talents and inner artist to all who walk the halls of this nursery school.

“Art Enrichment,” said Kate Rossetti, the teacher for this program, “can be very freeing for children. Art is personal, there is no right or wrong, and what they create belongs to them. Children can use art to express feelings, to pursue subjects that excite them, and to enjoy sensory experiences like the feeling of the brush moving over paper, the cool slipperiness of finger paints, or watching glue drop in patters on paper.”

What makes Grace Playschool’s program unique is the integration of its core values as a preschool school while enhancing art enrichment into the curriculum.

“The art enrichment class includes all the aspects of regular preschool class, including outdoor play, story time, music and movement, and free play, but with art as our focus. We approach art from several directions.” Rossetti said. “I find age-appropriate projects to help children understand the elements of art like line, color, and shading. Since young children learn best from doing, we give students fun, hands-on experiences with many different media, including paints, markers, collage, pastels, and simple printmaking techniques. For example, for one of our lessons on the element of line, the children made line pictures by arranging pieces of yarn that they’d dipped into watered-down glue onto paper.”   

A core part to any preschoolers’ day revolves around story time, and so much of children’s literature is accompanied by wonderful illustrations.