Open-Ended Art Activities For Infants and Toddlers
Creative development ideas for families: pairing child-directed art activities with book appreciation never felt so easy. On this episode of the Learn With Less podcast, Ayelet sits down with Julia Linsteadt, one half of the brains behind KidArtLit, whose goal is to make it easy for families to ignite creativity and a love of reading in their children.
In our conversation, we discussed the inspiration behind KidArtLit, what process art is and how young infants and toddlers can partake in it, and tips and resources Julia has for parents of infants and toddlers who want to pair early literacy activities with art making.
Quick Links From This Episode:
The Artful Parent by Jean Van’t Hul (affiliate link)
How to Read A Wordless Picture Book, featuring Megan Lingo of KidArtLit (Learn With Less Podcast Episode)
How to Provide Early Literacy Experiences for Infants and Toddlers, featuring Kayla O’Neill of Parenting Expert to Mom (Learn With Less Podcast Episode)
The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease (affiliate link)
Read Aloud Family by Sarah Mackenzie (affiliate link)
Art Bar Blog from Barbara Rucci
Connect With Us
Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest / YouTube
KidArtLit: Website / Facebook / Instagram
Text transcript of this episode
Ayelet: Welcome to episode 60 of the Learn With Less Podcast. Today I am speaking with Julia Linsteadt, one half of the founding team of KidArtLit. Julia and her business partner, Megan (who came onto the Learn With Less podcast in a previous episode speaking about wordless picture books), are both long time educators in the San Francisco Bay Area.
They met at a local moms group when they were both struggling to reconnect with their passions while raising awesome kids. They believe that everyone is born an artist and that a good story can be powerfully transformational. Their goal is to make it easy for families to ignite creativity and the love of reading in their children. Oh Julia, thanks for being here. Welcome to Learn With Less!
Julia: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here and to talk to you..
Ayelet: Well, I have asked you to come onto the show today to speak about process art and the unique spin that you and Megan have taken, and your pairing of early artistic endeavors and early literacy. But first, I’d love to hear just a little bit about you. What brought you to the kind of work you and Megan are doing today, and then why? Why are you so passionate about it?
Julia: Okay, great. That’d be happy to share. Actually, I have a degree in English education and so I’ve always been a… really a lover of books. In addition to that, my background’s actually in theater.
Ayelet: Me too!
Julia: That’s right! So, I mean I feel like that’s like a really wonderful foundation for any development of art since it encompasses everything, right? If it’s got the movement, it’s got the voice, it’s got the, the visual effect of it all. And when I graduated from college and everything, I started actually working with a lot of different alternative educational groups and youth development groups and that kind of guided me into becoming and using more and more of like arts education in these different ways to really connect with children and help them connect with these other subjects that they were working on and doing.
And so that kind of, over time, formed into its own thing and I eventually, once I had my own kids, was looking for classes for them that were arts-based, that were open ended. A lot of stuff that I had been doing in like outdoor education programs and things like that and I couldn’t find any. So I decided – took a leaf out of “The Artful Parent,” and I was like, she started, you know, a little art group in her backyard. And I thought, well, I can do that. So we started doing that with a moms group and from there I had… It was just like that little seed that planted.
I was doing these open-ended experiences with very young children and with my own and kind of having that time and space to do that was just… it was eye-opening and from an educational standpoint and to see the growth in these young children with their families, doing these art activities in tandem and connecting them through storytelling and movement and singing and just watching these kids just grow and these families really grow through that creative love.
That spun me off into doing more and becoming more of an arts educator and becoming a really big advocate for families to integrate creativity into their daily lives because of the difference it can make in their experience of connecting deeply with their kids and so that’s kind of my background and it led into Megan and me bumping into each other and kind of our worlds colliding because we were doing these cuts of tandem ways of approaching things and even the mine intended to be – it lead with art and a lot of ways.
There’s a lot of story and literacy base in the background and Megan was doing a lot of leading with literacy, right. But there’s a lot of arts and creativity that was in the background of she was doing. And so when we connected it was just like this makes sense. It’s like two puzzle pieces coming together.
Ayelet: Boom! And it’s so funny how you’re describing this because I feel like – and we were talking about this just before we went live, but all three of us are doing very similar things. Just coming at it from a different angle and it’s always so fun to meet other people who have those beliefs of the power of experiences for early childhood education and connecting families together with each other.
It’s just, I love what you guys are doing and I can’t wait to explore now more with everybody else. So that was sort of a bit of the inspiration behind what you guys are doing now, which is KidArtLit. Can you tell us a little bit more about how that happened and what that “boom mind blown” moment was like for you?
Julia: It was one of those things where you know, stuff just starts to happen and I feel like when something or somebody shows up in your life like multiple times, it’s like, hey, you need to pay attention to this. I at the time was working for a play cafe as their arts educator and so I would show up there. We’d set up all these different experiential learning environments for, for these little ones to do a lot of different hands on creative sensory experiences and I was on a local mom’s group and Megan posted something in there and she was interested in finding out from other moms like, Hey, I’m wanting to open up this play cafe over in the town that I live in.
And I was like, oh my gosh, that’d be amazing. One, I was driving pretty far to get to this other one. I was like, oh if you open one where I’ll, say, just drive down the street. But also, because I’ve worked with one, I had a really good sense of like what that industry is like and how that business format goes. And I was like, you guys should chat like you’re, you know, like talk to the owner of this one so you can kind of really see what this is like. So I connected those two and then Megan and I kind of stayed in touch after that just because it was kind of interesting. And we also connected on Instagram.
I really think Instagram was kind of the real incubator where we got to kind of just show each other what we were all about. We got to kind of, you know how it is. Yeah, like sneak around, see what he’s doing. And what’s your real philosophy here? And we did something called a freaky Friday where we swapped Instagram accounts and so she came on mine and we posted like three different books that kind of celebrate creativity and then I posted three different art projects that either went with a book or inspired storytelling in some way that was art based.
And the reactions we got were huge. Our audiences both were just like, they just were so hungry for that and we realized that we were both telling kind of a one sided story of something and at a… I think it was on a play date because we started to hang out and do some play dates together (once we realized we lived in the same town, I was like, that’s crazy). Really crazy.
And it was on a play date while we were chatting about some things like how we do take what I was doing with these different art experiences and take what she was doing and this, you know, online literacy realm and what she had done for a long time with classroom teachers and could bring that home for families because we both were doing it at home and seeing really great results with our own kids and we both were like, maybe it will be a literary magazine. Like that’s what we thought. Like, okay, let’s make this literary magazine.
And then we were like, okay, what do we do with it? It’s like we made it and we had this glorious little thing, so we decided to just share it with our Instagram followers and just give it away and say, you know, try this out. Let us know what you think. Give us some feedback. We got a lot of feedback which was they loved it. They liked this combo of arts and books. I mean, that’s been around for eons, but I feel like bringing this concept of really connecting into the literacy development and really figuring out how to connect to that process oriented, open-ended art was kind of a different way of approaching this.
Ayelet: And that’s what people want. I mean, that’s what I wanted as a parent. That’s what all of the Learn With Less audience is also all about. I mean, all parents want is… I mean we can read a blog post, an entire book and still feel like, Okay, I don’t, I still don’t know what to do. You know, maybe I understand a little bit more about the background, but how do I apply it right now? So that’s exactly what you guys are doing and it’s brilliant. It’s so simple.
Julia: It’s great because that’s what we ended up with – with people being like, we love it, this is what we want. But like please don’t send me to the craft store.
Ayelet: Yes, exactly. We don’t have enough time to do all that.
Julia: Yeah. And then others were like, we love the library… don’t send me to the library. I’ve got four kids, like please don’t send me to the library and we were like, okay, this is not what I expected. Megan and I were both like, what is going on here? It took us awhile to process all that because we weren’t sure. We were so excited to create something. You’re like, look at this shiny, beautiful thing and I mean it feels like a baby a lot of ways and it’s not like it was an ugly baby.
It was a really cute baby we created but like (no such thing, no such thing), but it was like, this isn’t being received quite the way that we anticipated, which is a really good learning curve to figure out like listen to your audience, right? But somebody said “we would do this if you gave us all the supplies and you gave us the book and then we might make that happen. Like we might actually do this.” And we’re like, okay, that’s that. And Megan’s like, because she’s with it. She’s like, Julia, it’s a subscription box. I’m like, Oh yeah, okay, great. Well how do we do that?
Ayelet: Oh my gosh. Which led to the rest of this entire experience adventure. Well, I mean this is awesome and people, we are absolutely obviously linking in the show notes to KidArtLit where you can learn everything about KidArtLit and they’re incredible subscription boxes, which is so cool. We love them.
But I think we want to hear also we’ve heard a little bit about this beautiful melding of arts and literacy. So let’s hear what his process art? A lot of people have heard this term, some people have never heard this term. What is process art and how can even, like you said, our youngest infants and toddlers partake in it.
Julia: Well, so process for me has always been: it’s the process, right? It’s the experience of doing these things together. It’s not having that end product in mind necessarily and feel like it’s actually approaching art in a very scientific way in a lot of ways, at least that’s how I’ve always looked at it. It’s like, here are these materials, here’s the child.
I’m going to give these to you and I’m going to not be in on top of this, and trying to like do this for you, but I’m going to stand back and really be that guide on the side and let you explore, discover, have those experiences of finding out like, Ooh, that slippery or Ooh, that’s rough, you know, and then kind of giving that space, I feel like that’s part of the process starts about is providing space and time for children to be able to just explore and make on their own terms.
And I feel like as an art educator, it’s our job to find some really cool things for these kids to interact with. I mean honestly though, they love sticks and dirt and things. It can happen in so many different varieties and ways, but it can also be an incredible learning tool and avenue for other connections that can be created for young children.
That’s what process art is to me is just, it’s this whole… And I always say to people it’s like from my own philosophy and kind of why I love that this box, it’s chaos in a fixed structure. Like we hold the space, we hold the structure, and then we put the children there and we say it’s safe. Take the risks that you want to take. Go for it. We’re here if you need us.
Ayelet: That’s great because you are, you’re there, you’re present, you’re together. And it’s this like run wild young child. Great. Alright, so let’s just take a brief break to hear a word from our sponsors and then we’re going to hear a few tips and resources from Julia about her favorite ways to pair process art with early literacy activities and then some additional resources that she recommends to families interested in seeking out resources about that topic.
Ayelet: Okay. Julia, let’s hear those tips. What are some of your sort of favorite tips and strategies that you like to use to encourage families when introducing art activities and/or early literacy activities to little ones.
Julia: Well okay, so my tip number one is to have these tools available in your home, so having books and having art materials in your home and accessible to your children and having them in an area where you are able to be attentive to them while they are exploring these different things.
But there are some different pieces that you can have to introduce right away and I was actually going to say we have a whole resource guide that Megan and I created that maybe we could link into.
Ayelet: Absolutely. We will put it in the show notes for sure.
Julia: Because that will give you a lot and we go into a whole detail as to like, you know, different things you can pull in there and put together.
Ayelet: Can you give us a couple of examples of the kinds of art materials that you might – not that this is a be all end all guide. This is, you know, a couple of things you might throw out there for us.
Julia: Sure. So for like really young, young children, I actually really think like having things like colorful blocks and toys that have these different colors on them that are in the realm of that rainbow spectrum are really great to have, to use so they can do patterning and ordering and things like that. And then you know, 3-D construction is, is something that’s really quite important for them to play with.
I always think having a big tub like I dunno, like a Tupperware tub type of thing, but can you can pour stuff into for them to explore whether that be flour, baking soda and vinegar, even just water with a few different toys that you then can have them play with droppers and put things in. Those are some of my go-to’s for very young children and then as they move into the preschool time, that’s when we start to introduce things like different types of crayons. I mean I really do like the bigger chunkier crayons that they can use. That’s always really fun.
Rollers are a really fun thing to have in there. And then honestly, anything from your recycling bin is just like one of the best things that you can use, bubble wrap and you know, cardboard tubes and when they get a little bit older and introducing that Washi tape can just be hours of absolute fun and that’s something that we wouldn’t necessarily include in our art cart or our art place, but that’s something that I feel like I could stick over there. I don’t have to worry so much about them exploring it on their own, you know, I don’t feel like I have to always be present necessarily, but it’s also something fun that I can dive into with them.
So that’s some, some ideas of things that you can put in there, but I think everyone is set, if you have some paper you have so Crayon, you have some, like a little watercolor set and if you have some sort of way for them to do some sort of imprinting of stamping and moving from some sort of image transfer to another since that’s always something magical for young children. But those are kind of my go-to’s there.
Ayelet: Yeah. And I think, you know, some of those things like in the beginning what you were talking about, like literally colorful blocks. I mean those are brilliant tools in general for play and I love that you include them in art activities like that is in a way that is an art activity. You are exposing a child to color.
And I think just similar to a recent podcast episode we had with Kayla O’Neill who is from Parenting Expert to Mom, she spoke all about tips about early literacy experiences and you know, everything is early literacy. Just like everything is art. Just like everything is sensory. Just like everything is music. You know, again, like I cannot stress this enough and I say it, I think almost every time on the Learn With Less podcast, early childhood, zero to three, at least those first years are up period of holistic learning.
When we are exposing our children to all kinds of different types of experiences, they are integrating everything together, right? They’re synthesizing information in every which way. And a fine motor activity is also a cognitive activity is also a communication activity. We layer upon layer all this information and all these experiences and that’s how they learn. That’s how they play. So I love that you, I mean really what it comes down to and what I’m noticing you talking about are these are open-ended experiences. That’s the key, right?
Julia: It is the key because I feel like, well I don’t feel – research-based, right? The more that you provide these types of manipulatives for your young children, I mean they’re going to make these connections on their own and it’s, it just depends on where it happens and when. And so when they’re very little, I always talk about like those early childhood years, like you’re trying to help them make connections to see how they fit into the world of their family. Right?
And like how they really, how they matter and how that’s why doing art activities that are tandem with your child where they are contributing to it with you is so important and they can then see their place within their family and then as they get older you start giving them more tools and more experiences that are art based that they can see.
How they’re then relating to their local area, then they can expand that and see how they relate to the world at large and that’s why I’m always like with very young children, we don’t do as much with like art history because there’s still trying to figure out like, well I’m, I’m a sister in a family of five. What does that mean? Like how does that work for me? And really it’s like if they’re able to then take these activities and kind of explore and see how that relates to everything else, then they’re going to be able to make those connections to art history later on. It’s all going to just come together.
But I was going to say like, we, I just want to show you this because I feel like this integrates it really well. This is for our most recent box, but all of our boxes have this “Ready, Set, Go” in it where it’s this idea of a warm-up and we’re doing hand kites this month and so it’s just to play with color, to put things onto, you know, play with these really fun textures and then to give the kids something to actually do in their bodies so that they are then interacting with this concept of visual movement, visual movement of art. That art doesn’t just have to be something you create on a page
Ayelet: And for all those people who are listening to the podcast. Tell us what you’re holding up, Julia.
Julia: Oh, I’m sorry. I’m holding up a little bag and it’s got all of the materials in it to create these little wooden hand kites and become two wooden rings that are solid wood and then these beautiful silk ribbons that you tie on and it’s an early tying experience and figuring out how to loop things through a circle, so something that they can hold.
Ayelet: Yes, exactly. I love this kind of stuff too because your KidArtLit kits are technically for like the preschool and above age, but something like that and all of these open-ended materials again, and these beautiful books and any kind of process art is absolutely applicable to our infants and toddlers as well, and they are just going to be using them at a different level. It doesn’t mean that they can’t interact with them.
I mean a hand kite like that – a literally a wooden circle and some ribbon is a, an amazing toy for an infant. Like that’s great. They can mouth it, they can hold it up, you can hold it above them and dangle the ribbons, that’s awesome. So, for anyone who’s listening who has, say a preschooler and an infant or just to say 11 month old and above like such great ideas, all of these kinds of ideas that Julia is talking about can absolutely be applied to all age groups in that early set. All right, let’s hear a few other tips. You’ve got all kinds of gold for us, I know.
Julia: Well, our other thing that I always talk about is how to make books accessible, so having them around your home in little book baskets and things so that children can go in and get them and then having them there, and kind of having a library that you can pull from. I’m a, I’m a really lazy but mom, to be honest, like I don’t rotate things as often as I should. I kinda let my children do it.
Ayelet: There is no “should” Julia!
Julia: Thank you! Yeah, no, there’s not. But I have found that having these little nooks around our home that have books in them has really lent to just these little quiet moments of my kids, you know, sitting there, opening and exploring… because a book in itself is an exploration of art in so many ways – of looking at the way that the words come together on a page, and looking at how the images tell that story, whether or not your child can read!
And it’s something that they can really build upon themselves. So, scattering them around your home and – in a contained way – is something that we’ve always found, and I have advocated for, and that the more that you have in your home, so it just starts to come more naturally for your children to really connect in to reading.
Ayelet: That interest in books everywhere.
Julia: Yes. Yes. And then, let’s see. So I had one other one which was that in a lot of ways, working with process start with your kids… I know that for a lot of parents that this can cause a lot of that feeling of overwhelmed. Like, oh, I gotta like set this all up and I need to put these things out, and how am I going to do this. And yeah, I just, you know, I always want to say like, you are enough, you are really what your child needs. That’s really what they are seeking is that eye contact, that time on your lap of connecting and then sitting with you and working through something together and providing that little space.
And it doesn’t have to be anything big. It can be a small space. You clear on your dining room table for a moment. It can be a space on your patio outside, that art can happen anywhere at anytime and that you don’t have to have a whole full cabinet of things to do this with your kids. You can go take a walk outside and go on a search for, for colors and hunt for them together, but there’s so many ways to integrate these things and these great literacy, learning and you know, art development just by being in existence together and that’s really, that’s really what they’re craving, right?
And so, but we find that families can feel very overwhelmed by this. Like, oh, again, that would, that “should,” right, oh, I should do this and I should do that. And that’s where this, this kid are like, boxes come into play. It’s like when you feel so overwhelmed, so okay, it just shows up.
You do it when it makes sense to you, but really in all honesty, it’s like feel free to connect with your kids in these ways whenever you want. It’s always available. We just want to make if you’re looking for something that’s a way to broaden this perspective or if it’s not your cup of tea because it’s not everyone’s, this makes it easier, but that you can easily do this in your home on a regular basis with again, those rainbow blocks. And a basket of books.
Ayelet: It’s great. I think what I love about your KidArtLit boxes are the fact that they are simply that, it’s like here, here is an example of what you can do now with all these materials and from all those materials and the guide that we’re giving you in order to understand all the different ways that you can use these materials, go forth and thinking about ways that you can use the other materials that are also in your home all the time.
It’s great. Love it. Alright, so can you share with us some of your favorite resources for families who’d like to learn more in general about these kinds of early literacy experiences and process art and things like that?
Julia: I have two books that I’m going to share, just some titles and they may be familiar with your audience. The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease is a really good one. It’s like it’s a parenting guide of using literacy to really educate and to raise your kids. The other one that just came out is the Read Aloud Family by Sarah Mackenzie. It’s brand new. It’s got a whole list of ways to integrate reading and literacy into your daily life with your children and she gives a lot of really great book lists and things like that, too.
And then and then for resources for bringing in more art. I mean I would say KidArtLit in general is a good spot to start, but then in a general too, I could direct you to several different blogs, but then I do find that sometimes that can be a little overwhelming.
I would say that Barbara Rucci’s book, if you look up Barbara Rucci, she’s Art Bar, she’s got the Art Bar blog. She has her knew her newest book that came out last year is a really wonderful and it gives you a lot of really open-ended experiences for young children that in case you’re now you’re ever in a rut and you’re like, I don’t know what to do with you today, let me pull this open and you can really go from there and a lot of them are things that you have to render home and it’s an applicable for very young children up to probably I’d say, well, I don’t know. A lot of them, they can go all the way through upper elementary, so that’s an incredible resource. Art Bar. Yeah, she’s got her finger on, on all that, especially for that early childhood development side of things.
Ayelet: Well we’ve had just because we’ve had a few people in the chat asking exactly like, okay, well what is the age group that KidArtLit boxes are most appropriate for? And again, just to say like as we have illustrated, many of the things that are in those boxes are for an even wider age that Julia is about to say, but when you created these boxes, what was the sort of intended target market age?
Julia: It’s ages three to about seven. Okay. So it’s mid to late preschool to kindergarten, first half of first grade. Very nice.
Ayelet: Awesome. Well Julia, thank you so much and thank you to all of the participants of the Learn With Less® Curriculum Online Program for families who are here listening live. We are going to continue the discussion and open up for a Q&A session for you guys in just a minute, but for everyone listening from home or on the go, thank you so much for joining us and we will see you next time.
