Creation
The Preschool Art Expert was created by Katherine Karayiannis. While teaching preschool, Katherine found that other teachers were stressed out at art time. They were creating pieces of art for each student, while children were sitting, bored, at the table with nothing to do.
Often, Katherine heard that parents want their children to learn art but don't know anything about art!
Katherine knew there had to be a better way, so she created The Preschool Art Expert and resources for preschool teachers and parents!
Katherine has over thirty-five years of experience with children. In addition to teaching private art lessons, she taught art in the public schools to kindergarten through twelfth grade. She taught art in the vocational schools to both adult and youth classes. She taught in the Autism Unit at Cincinnati Public schools, the largest school system in Cincinnati.
She has enjoyed working with preschoolers in a variety of settings including as a general education teacher, an art teacher, teaching workshops and working one-on-one with them. Her focus has been on toddlers and preschoolers, which are her favorite ages to teach and where she has spent the most time in her career.
Katherine has worked as a professional artist, creating murals in the area. She was part of Cincinnati's 2018 Homearama, the most prestigious home show in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she painted two murals in the Justin Doyle home.
Katherine's love of children and passion for art began at a young age. She started helping out in her father's child-care center around the age of ten and eventually worked every position in the business.
Later she earned her degree in Art Education from Western Kentucky University, where she graduated Magna Cumme Laude.
Katherine enjoys visits with her granddaughter and playing with her Bombay cat.
Philosophy
The philosophy of The Preschool Art Expert includes the following ideas.
First is the idea that young children can grasp art skills, concepts and vocabulary.
In her experience, Katherine realized that young children, as early as two years old, could learn, memorize, and retain facts about art. So, instead of waiting until elementary school, Katherine started teaching these art facts earlier. Her first lessons were teaching the Primary colors.
Katherine also introduced the idea of collage into her three-year-old class. Together, the children learned what a collage is and how to put one together. As a group, they created beautiful flowers that can be seen in the photo section of this website.
Naturally, while learning art facts and concepts, the children also learn vocabulary
Second is the idea of teaching art in a sequential order that builds from simplest to more complex skills in a way that corresponds with children’s developmental abilities and uses repetition. By repeating the same lesson in different ways, children retain what they learn better.
Since younger children are limited in their fine motor abilities, Katherine found a simple way to teach mixing the primary colors to make the secondary colors by mixing shaving cream and paint with their hands. This same skill is repeated later on using paint and brushes with older children, whose fine motor skills are more developed,
Just as with other subjects like math, simple concepts like 1 + 2 = 3 is learned before multiplication. In art, the Primary colors are learned before the secondary colors.
Third, and unique to The Preschool Art Expert, is the way Katherine identifies art in everyday life. With each art project, there is an accompanying activity, to show children how art relates to their daily lives.
Identifying how art relates to daily life increases the child’s understanding of the importance of art.