Where adults may see ordinary items, children often see limitless possibilities, connecting everyday moments to the creative arts. Painting, sculpting, building, and creating in other forms or modes support them to express their ideas, emotions, and growing knowledge and skills. As they create, children share their thinking, explore aspects of themselves and others, and work to make sense of new concepts and experiences. When planned as part of an integrated curriculum, the creative arts can promote skills across domains( physical, social, and emotional) and content areas( literacy, math, and engineering).
Creative arts also offer an entry point for community involvement— a key part of high-quality early childhood education. By actively engaging children with their broader community, educators can help to foster children’ s sense of belonging, purpose, and agency as they communicate their ideas, emotions, and understandings about the world around them.
I am an early childhood educator and former teacher at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’ s Children’ s Center. This Reggio Emilia-inspired program, which has been NAEYC-accredited since 1992, focuses on building relationships with children and their families through a project-based approach. The center follows a continuity of care model, meaning I stayed with one group of children from infancy through kindergarten.
Several years ago, my class began partnering with the Merrill Community Sharing Garden in Beloit, Wisconsin, to create a four-paneled mural for display there. During this multiyear project, children focused on depicting what they called“ a layer of Earth”— sunshine, the sky, the soil, and people. For the panel depicting people, children created a sculpture from trash that was collected from around the garden and its nearby neighborhood.
In this article, I share how art and community involvement are part of developmentally appropriate practice. I also describe how our project supported and advanced children’ s creative expression.
Community Involvement as a Component of Early Learning
One standard of quality in early childhood education includes community connections. NAEYC’ s“ Early Childhood Program Standards” position statement notes that early childhood programs should be active members of their larger communities and build on community resources to support learning goals. This aligns with developmentally appropriate practice: No matter where an early learning setting is located, it is surrounded by a community that is rich with assets that can benefit children. When educators learn about and engage with their neighborhoods, towns, and cities, they help to ensure that children’ s and families’ contexts are represented.
In my work, I continually seek opportunities to connect children’ s interests and experiences to community initiatives. The children in my class had long exhibited an interest in trash. They liked to use it during art activities. As they learned to take their first steps, walk, and then run, they would peek under benches or look along stairwells for a stray piece of trash to collect. But because of our program’ s focus on the environment, there wasn’ t much, and the children were frustrated.
22 Educating Young Children
Summer 2026