Creative art experience for children..edited

Creative Arts
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Institution
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Materials and Equipment for infants, toddler, preschool, and school-age children
Different materials reflect the age and life of children. Others show the diversity existing in various societies. (infant (0-12mth), toddler, preschool, school-age children require having different types of dolls, toys, dress-up Props, books, photos, pictures, and music.
Infants (0-12months)
Infants play with lightweight, open-ended, simple, and easy to wash toys. The play items include nesting cups, balls, and pop-beads. They appreciate handling rattles, squeak toys, and action/reaction toys. They require a large crawling area with stable furniture to hold and pull up. They eat their toys and cuddle them. They appreciate pictures of real objects (Smith, 2000).
Toddlers (12-36months)
Toddlers are manipulative and appreciate stacking toys, beads, wooden spoons, simple squeezes and pounding benches. They study picture books, listen to phone toys, and hold their dolls. They also push and pull them. Children at this age figure the movement of lines. They use crayons to scribble on papers and enjoy the colored lines. The children cherish the feedback given by crayons and senses together with the smell of paint (Smith, 2000) The lines could be open circles, diagonals or curved.
Preschoolers (3-5years)
Preschoolers appreciate play equipment to balance and climb on them. The preschoolers play with crayons, safe past, tempera paints, and fingers. Sand and water toys make them happy.

The children play with unit blocks and accessories, audio recordings, musical instruments, and picture books. They love dolls, clothes to dress them up and puppets. They appreciate furniture of their sizes. Many children at this age hold various images in their mind and present it on pages. Their thinking ability is developing faster to enable them to draw a picture using crayons.
Pre-kindergarten children
Pre-kindergarten children prefer having balancing and climbing equipment. They like picture books and musical instruments to play and record music. They play board, card games, and complex art projects. They play with unit blocks and other accessories including trees, signs, cars, and figures. They manipulate toys, sort, and count them. They are interested in appropriate computer software. The children are familiar with animals, people, and objects. They use crayons to draw and name them on paper (Smith, 2000).
School-age children (above five years)
School-age children prefer having materials that organize their games. They use unit blocks, accessories, and woodworking material. They appreciate musical instruments, board and card games, jigsaw puzzles, and computer software. School-aged children appreciate materials for Science projects, dramatic play, hobby, and art project, connecting, interlocking and cooking.
Schoolchildren experience writing numbers and using crayons to print them on paper. They copy various shapes. The scribbles change as the children write shorter and longer scribbles of letters. The crayons form larger patterns of words. The exiting experience shows that the child has begun to understand different meanings of text and print (Smith, 2000).
Arrangement of materials for school age, pre-kindergarten, and preschoolers
There should be clear and visual boundaries to define when learning has started and stopped. Shelving units are suitable to separate learning areas. Caregivers eliminate runways using straight and long isles. The sand and water for play should be near a sink to clean up afterward. They group similar objects and label boxes and bins.
All areas must be open to view every child. There should be quiet areas for children who want to be alone (Smith, 2000). All equipment should be at the center accessible to the children. All children could have cues to take the toys to the table.
Arrangement of materials for infants and toddlers
The cribs should be spaced to ensure safety while walking. The play area should be well spaced to allow mobile infants crawl without difficulties, move and explore new places. All furniture should be durable and strong enough for the child to pull itself up. Every material and object in the room should be safe for the infants and toddlers to hold. The infants should be placed where there is little movement and visible. All things organized logically prevent people from stepping on mobile infants. The environment must offer varied opportunities for children to explore play items, materials, and other accessories in the room (Smith, 2000).
Learning occurring at each stage
Infants and toddlers learn to grasp and hold objects. They learn to name and dump containers. Pre-schoolers learn to sort items, think, and discuss various routines, number and count toys. Pre-kindergarten children learn basic math and science through sand and water play. They construct blocks, use levers, pulleys, and scales to understand their working. Children learn to write, speak, and draw as they work with different tools. School-age children explore various skills through cooking and other plays (Smith, 2000). The experiment is inclusive because the caregiver has to cut crayons into short lengths that the child can grip. The caregivers cut and tape papers on the table to avoid movement as the child draws. Controlling children movement to avoid conflicts with others ensures they are safe during play.
References
Smith. (2000). Planning Developmentally Appropriate Activities. Early Care, Education Training, and Consulting, 1-32.