In early childhood settings across the country, you can walk into a room and instantly tell what kind of art culture lives there. Sometimes you see walls lined with identical paper plate animals, each one carefully guided by an adult hand. Other times, you see a riot of colour, texture, and imagination — each piece unmistakably belonging to the child who created it.

The difference between these two environments is more than aesthetic. It speaks to the heart of our pedagogy, our image of the child, and our commitment to fostering creativity, agency, and authentic expression.

In early childhood settings, educators often face a subtle but powerful choice: should learning focus on the process or the product? While both approaches have their place, understanding the distinction can transform how we nurture creativity, independence, and critical thinking in young children.

This template can be used to display children's art.

Here’s a curated set of 20 child-centered art activity instructions designed to foster creativity, autonomy, and exploration. Each activity includes setup tips, educator role guidance, and EYLF/NQS links.

In many early childhood settings, art activities have unintentionally become routine tasks—structured, time-bound, and educator-led. Children are often called one by one to complete pre-set crafts, given step-by-step instructions, and quickly ushered away. This approach can lead to disengagement, low interest, and a missed opportunity to nurture creativity and emotional development.

 Here are 20 Collaborative Art Projects for Preschoolers that encourage teamwork, creativity, and fun and the Benefits Of Collaborative Art

Process art is all about focusing on the creative experience rather than the final product. The following article provides 50 Process Art Ideas,  Importance Of Process Art and more. 

This template can be used as an art portfolio for children.

Some of the most significant early childhood learning takes place through art and craft activities. Thus children’s artwork is considered among the major forms of pedagogical documentation. The following article provides information on the importance and strategies of displaying children’s artwork.

Art enjoys a highly significant space in early childhood learning programmes for the way it promotes a variety of learnings. Both as a process and product, art helps improve creativity, cognition, social skills and emotional expression in children. If you are involved in the planning or implementation of art-based play and learning in young children, here is a bit more on the different stages of child art development.