Responsibility can feel like a loaded topic to discuss with children, especially given some of the blatant examples of irresponsibility covered in the media. But, elementary is an important time to begin deepening young peoples' foundation for understanding what responsible decision-making looks and feels like.
Certainly a didactic conversation about the importance of responsibility would be dry even for most adults. This is where arts integration is a profound tool. Unpacking character-based themes and social-emotional skill development is so much easier when it's integrated into fun and easy art instruction.
There is something almost magical about how creative play opens young learners to discussing hard or 'boring' content in ways that serve not only their own growth, but the development of a community based in shared values.
When students in the Elements of heART program experience the joy and ease of building on the skills they developed in Linear Attention, powerful things begin to happen. On the surface they discover that playing with shapes can make for more interesting art than they would have expected. But, underneath their creative play new awareness emerges in which being part of a community of engaged makers motivates them to consider their choices as they make them and care for one another in the process of creative discovery.
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