Adults sometimes fail to appreciate the depth of understanding shown in children's art. Examination of drawings in the Prospect Archive (North Bennington, Vermont), a collection of 200,000 pieces of children's art, suggests that houses have great meaning for children and that much can be learned about children from their drawings. (IS)

The focus of this special issue is how art facilitates the cognitive maturation of the child. In the last 20 years, the copious research conducted in the field of children's art and artistic development underscores that children's intellectual, as well as emotional development, is of long-standing and continuing interest. (RM)

Using examples from children drawing in a year one classroom, this article examines firstly, how drawing operates as a unique mental tool, and secondly, the role of drawing in the construction and development of knowledge. Young children utilize prior knowledge and experience to negotiate and construct meaning through their interactions with…

This a report of several studies of children's artistic behavior carried out at Cornell University with 3- to 5-year-old nursery school children. The studies involved: (1) taping comments children made while painting at nursery school; (2) determining if there was a difference in difficulty between two- and three-dimensional representations; (3)…