A Visit to the Rainforest

How the creative arts promote language and literacy.
by Victoria Brown and Sarah Pleydell

Why the Arts?

The arts provide a unique, multi-dimensional learning medium for all children including English language learners (ELLs). Body movement, dance, music, gestures, mime, and puppets help ELLs illustrate the ideas they are learning to express in the new language (Brown & Pleydell 1999). Using varied sensory experiences to support a word or concept in the new language helps create multiple imprints on the learner’s memory. The open-ended nature of the arts also alleviates anxiety about making mistakes and thus encourages ELLs to cross the threshold from non-verbal activity into verbalization. The arts create a strong stimulus for the development of language in a natural, spontaneous, and creative way.

Furthermore, the arts support all areas of children’s development (Deasy 2002; Arts Education Partnership 1998; Caldwell 1997). They foster critical thinking, social learning, emotional intelligence, mathematical understanding, problem solving, creativity, and literacy. These areas encompass the eight general Domains referred to in The Head Start Child Outcomes Framework.

The Rainforest: An Arts-Based Curriculum

Teachers at Lucy School in Middletown, MD use an artsbased curriculum approach with their preschoolers. They immersed one group of 4 – 5 year olds in a variety of art experiences about the rainforest that were inspired by Lynne Cherry’s book, The Great Kapok Tree (1990). This book tells the story of a woodcutter who wants to chop down one of the greatest trees in the Amazon basin, the Kapok, but is magically overpowered by the forest and falls asleep. In his dream, the forest animals plead with him to spare the tree for their sake. Over a six day period in the classroom, the visual arts, drama, storytelling, creative movement, and music were used to stimulate the children’s language and other areas of development.

Many children were English language learners, and these art forms were intentionally used to facilitate their acquisition of English and at the same time, support their home language of Spanish or American Sign Language (ASL). This model—learning through the arts—could be used with any language.

English language learning was promoted as new words were connected to references in the children’s home languages, to other symbolic vocabularies (such as signs or pictures), as well as to the children’s kinesthetic and sensory imprints from other classroom experiences. Signs (ASL) are generally easy to learn and help reinforce new vocabulary in any language.

Excerpts from this curriculum project illustrate how each specific art form promoted the children’s development in general and language learning in particular.

Creative Movement

Creative movement dissolves language barriers and, at the same time, provides a kinesthetic and sensory connection for learning new vocabulary in any language. Children were shown photographs of rainforest creatures: monkeys, jaguars, parrots, frogs and sloths, snakes and butterflies. Each animal was named in English, Spanish and ASL. While sitting in a circle where they could see each other, children created sounds and facial expressions (they chattered and grinned like monkeys and they hissed and flicked their tongues like snakes). Next, they added a full body movement (the snakes slithering, the monkeys swinging their arms, the butterflies flapping their graceful wings).

While Amazon rain forest sounds were played on a CD, the children moved like animals. They had great fun scrambling and jumping like monkeys, but also delighted in crawling as slowly as a sloth.

Visual Arts

An important part of this work was creating the physical environment of the rain forest. The artwork followed the movement and drama, which made it more imaginative and vivid, because the children had first experienced the story with their bodies. By suspending large, inexpensive pieces of green netting from the ceiling and then hanging vines, flowers, snakes, butterflies, birds, lizards, tree frogs, toads (all painted and sculpted by the children), a rainforest canopy was created. This canopy shimmered above the children, giving them a “living through” experience of walking in the rainforest.

Opportunities for vocabulary and concept learning were plentiful: “We’re building a canopy for the animals,” tissue paper crumples,” “Are parrots the biggest birds?” Latin American music was often played in the background to help focus and stimulate the children during the art activities.

Music

The children made rain sticks (using wrapping paper tubes, aluminum foil and rice) to capture and recreate the music of nature; they popped bubble wrap to simulate the sounds of raindrops falling from branches at the storm’s end. Using fingers, hands and assorted percussion instruments, rhythms and beats were also created for rain sounds. Other musical instruments introduced during the week included gourd shakers, drums and simple flutes. The instruments were featured in the closing fiesta. For this event, the teachers also made up a song in Spanish and English describing the layers of the rainforest and sung to the tune of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” The children also sang, signed, and danced to a variety of multicultural musical selections.

Drama

Dramatization was a vital part of each day’s activities, but the children’s favorite scenes were their encounters with “the Señor” (the main character from the book, played by a teacher). His “hacienda” was set up in a corner of the classroom where he welcomed and entertained the children. He fed them slices of mango and laid grass mats on the floor for the children’s naps. The Señor spoke in English sprinkled with Spanish phrases and words, many of which he reinforced with sign language, “Amigos, Friends! Bienvenidos a mi casa.” “Buenos días! Hello.”

“Hi. Hola. Is this the rainforest?” the wide-eyed visitors ask the stranger. “Si, Bosque - Rainforest. Beautiful - Bonito! Yo soy lenador - a woodcutter. You may call me Señor. Mira, come inside and see what I have made. Miren todas las cosas bellas.” The children enter the woodcutter’s home and are served arroz con frijoles. “Yummy.” “Yuck.” “Can I have more?”

The children particularly enjoyed the discussion where they took on the roles of their favorite animal and talked to the woodcutter in his dream. They told him how sad it made them to see their homes (los arboles) being cut down and destroyed. The teacher aide, in the role of a tour guide, translated the English and Spanish.

Later, the children and their teachers discussed what solutions there might be to the problem of deforestation. Maybe the woodcutter could grow the kinds of foods that flourished in the shade. Maybe he could cut down some of the trees and spare the rest. Finally, they went back to the book to see how the problem was resolved there. (The woodcutter walks out of the forest with the tree still standing. He leaves his ax behind.)

Looking Back

This language and arts-rich learning experience provided many opportunities for all the children to excel and to enjoy learning. Their language learning was evident: Spanish speakers learned English, English speakers learned Spanish, and all learned sign language. The arts have the capacity to stir a child’s curiosity and provoke questions and idea sharing. Perhaps this is because drama, movement, music, dance, and visual arts have the potential for communicating to young children in their own language: the language of make-believe (Brown & Pleydell 1999).

In 1982, the Child Development Associate (CDA) Credential Bilingual Specialization was established for candidates with a working knowledge of two languages, including the ability to speak, read, and write well enough to understand others and to be understood by others.

Excerpt from E. Dollie Wolverton, Historical Overview: Head Start as the Nation's Early Childhood Laboratory Supporting English Language Learners (http://www.headstartinfo.org/English_lang_learners_tkit.htm)

REFERENCES

Arts Education Partnership. 1998. Young children and the arts: Making creative connections. A report from the task force on children’s learning and the arts: Birth to age eight. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education.

Brown, V. and Pleydell, S. 1999. The dramatic difference: Drama in the preschool and kindergarten classroom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Cadwell, L. B. 1997. Bringing Reggio Emilia home: An innovative approach to early childhood education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Cherry, L. 1990. The great kapok tree. New York, NY: Harcourt, Inc.

Deasy, R.J. (Ed.). 2002. Critical links: Learning in the arts and student academic and social development. Washington, D.C.: Arts Education Partnership.

Victoria Brown and Sarah Pleydell are co-directors of the Lucé Institute for Creative Arts in Early Childhood, a teacher-training center. Victoria Brown is also the director of Lucy School, an arts-based preschool and kindergarten in Middletown, MD. T: 301-293-1163; E: lucyschool@aol.com