Arts-Integration: Empowering All Children

Arts-integration allows for accessibility in your classroom

I am the first person to say that children should play to ensure they are connecting neural pathways in their brain to new concepts and skills. Play is the avenue in which they apply the new learning to the real world. However, there are many different approaches to using play in your classroom. One of my favorite applications is arts-integration! What does this mean specifically? A magical classroom transformation into an art gallery, a dance studio, a theater, or even a musician’s sound booth to name a few. Now, this may seem hard, but if you allow creativity in your classroom, the children will bring the imagination and brilliance to their own learning! Who wouldn’t want to learn about addition by putting on a play for their peers? Or, by singing a song about the castle they just built out of 3D objects?

Arts-Integration allows all children to succeed in the classroom. It provides an avenue to approach the subject matter in different ways, thus providing more access points for each learner. Aside from the accessibility component and honoring the multiple intelligences inside your classroom, there are wonderful mathematical benefits that start forming underneath the surface.

• Listening to music, or learning how to play a musical instrument, enhances the relationship with spatial-temporal reasoning – which leads to geometry success.
• Dance is a link to non-verbal reasoning – which leads to critical thinking and problem-solving abilities.
• Drama enhances language development and understanding – which leads to better communication and discourse in the classroom.

Picture credit: Imagination Fort Worth, Uniting Arts and Minds

Access a music and dance activity in the Resource Hub below!

To learn more about how play can enhance your mathematics classroom, check out the Inspiring Play in Young Learners blog series.

Click HERE for the downloadable resources for this article!

About ORIGO Education

ORIGO Education is dedicated to making learning meaningful, enjoyable and accessible for all students with Pre-K and Elementary print and digital instructional materials, as well as professional learning for mathematics.