Exploring Studio Materials: Teaching Creative Art Making to Children

What a welcome shifting of the art education conversation this book is! In plain-speak and with many examples of contemporary art approaches (along with ties to research), readers are encouraged to (gasp!) MAKE ART. And while we’re at it, understand what studio thinking actually is, based on experience. Want to know what can happen when we stop dictating to our students what their artwork should look like and be about? Far from anything goes and certainly not the overly academized approaches of our recent past, Hafeli’s book should be read by everyone who teaches art to anyone, and everyone who prepares teachers for this kind of work.

Great book in perfect condition.

This is a very good book..... The only issue was it was sent very late....

A requested gift. My Daughter loved it.

Three stars

Don’t waste your money on this silly book. With its old-fashioned, text book-like structure and dry, pedantic writing style it demonstrates the complete opposite of the kind of open-ended, exploratory teaching promoted by really good art educators. Folksy, in its constant referring to the reader as “you” and directing “you” step by step to do this and not do that, the book is not at all thought-provoking. It presents no original ideas, new information, or fresh viewpoints, and asks only tightly-bounded, uninteresting questions. Any artist or educator with a few years of teaching experience could have written this book. Those completely new to the field might learn a thing or two from this author, assuming, that is, they can trudge through the banal presentation of the rudimentary material. Ironically, the author takes as her theoretical framework that of progressive education, but if she was trained in this approach to teaching – like they said of George W. Bush having gone to Yale -- clearly, it didn’t take.