Visual Thinking Strategies for Preschool shows how teachers can add visual thinking strategies (VTS) to their existing curriculum to encourage language, critical thinking, and social skills for children ages three to five. In this sequel to his popular book, Visual Thinking Strategies, author Philip Yenawine describes using art and other visual experiences to create engaging and powerful learner-centered environments for young children just beginning their formal school experience.

Implemented in hundreds of schools, districts, and cultural institutions, the VTS teaching method features an open‐ended conversation about a selected work of art. Teachers facilitate the group conversation using simple questions: "What's going on in this picture?," "What do you see that makes you think that?," and "What more can we find?"

The book provides transcripts and analysis of classroom conversations as a means of illustrating the range of ways VTS can be used with preschoolers. Drawing on interviews with preschool teachers from public, private, and charter schools from around the country, Yenawine highlights the benefits of these discussions for students, including English language learners and students with special needs.

Visual Thinking Strategies for Preschool provides teachers with another means to teach language and social skills, and introduces students to the treasures found in art.
About the Author: Philip Yenawine is cocreator of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) with cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen. He is currently cofounder and creative director of Watershed, a nonprofit entity established to support student-centered, inquiry-based teaching, including the dissemination of VTS through an innovative online platform. Watershed forms partnerships with other organizations focused on helping reform-oriented teachers find and use resources as well as communicate with one another.

Yenawine was director of education at the Museum of Modern Art from 1983 to 1993. He also directed education programs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art earlier in his career. He was founding director of the Aspen Art Museum and consulting curator at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston. He has taught art education at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago and Massachusetts College of Art. He received the National Art Education Association's Award for Distinguished Service in 1993, was the George A. Miller Visiting Scholar at the University of Illinois in 1996, and the first Educator-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 2012, among other honors. He is on the board of Art Matters, a foundation giving fellowships to cutting-edge artists.

Yenawine is the author of How to Look at Modern Art, Key Art Terms for Beginners, and six children's books about art among other writing projects. His most recent book, Visual Thinking Strategies: Using Art to Deepen Learning Across School Disciplines, was published by Harvard Education Press in October 2013. He attended Princeton University from 1960 to 1963, and holds a BA from Governor's State University, University Park, Illinois, and an MA from Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Kansas City Art Institute in 2003.