How does the artmaking in the MiniMasters program promote school readiness and positive outcomes for early learners?

While looking over the framework and domains for school readiness, there are a few areas where the MiniMasters program (and artmaking) can have a strong influence on the early learners' growth, development and school readiness. I'm sure this post will seem a bit academic but I am just interested to see how school readiness domains, visual art content standards and the MiniMasters program can find some common ground.  Besides talking about inspiring and engaging experiences, there is also sometimes a need to apply all the buzzwords, current trends and standards to what we are doing.

The essential domains of approaches to learning, cognition and general knowledge as well as physical development are addressed in art making.  With such a strong focus on the process, many of the domains are accomplished.  Creative arts expression, specifically art as an approach to learning gives the learners another outlet to express their ideas.  In the MiniMasters program, we use cooperation (or collaboration) as an approach to making art.  Capitalizing on the learners' initiative and curiosity allows for open-ended projects in which the learners explore their interests, ideas and are choice-makers.  The most important part of the program, for me, is taking a backseat and allowing the learners to work together to make an artwork. In this, besides the collaboration and self-initiative, early learners are able to use reasoning and problem solving to complete the artwork.  This year, I plan to come prepared with a small collection of art materials, some basic art tools and help the students to use what I have to solve the problem.  With all this, fine motor skills are also refined, which might be a bit obvious...

The Ohio Department of Education recently released new visual arts standards.  While looking over the Kindergarten content statements, I realized that many of the things that are happening during the MiniMasters classroom visits are addressed in these statements.  Only meaning that the early learners in the MiniMasters program are already progressing toward the cognitive and creative learning processes of Kindergarten students.  Without even realizing it, school-readiness is built into the MiniMasters program!  I thought I would just list a few of the statements that apply and are interesting to me:

• Describe the meaning in the marks they make on paper
• Explore their environments and experiences for artmaking ideas
• Generate ideas and images for artwork based on observation, memory, imagination and experience
• Describe their artworks and efforts and share their artmaking processes
• Show confidence and pride in their artistic accomplishments 

Another important part of the program, is that after completing the classroom visits, the students and their families are invited to visit the museum and take pride in the artwork that was created.  Hopefully this experience and enhance family relationships and strengthen the museum's role in the community and link families to the museum experience.