I believe that arts integration is a way to make learning fun for the learners. It enables you as the teacher to reach outcomes and teach two or more subjects simultaneously. It also enables you as the teacher to include the various learning styles that are in your classroom. It is student-centred which makes provision for interactive lessons in your class. It is a practical, relaxing and creative way for learners to showcase what they already know as well as what they have learned. It allows learners to internalise the new skills and knowledge that have been taught as the activities that they do have real-life value. Arts integration is also a way for you as the teacher to make sure that you keep the learners attention and at the same time teach them the value of arts and encourage them to love arts. The integration of arts helps learners develop emotionally, physically and socially. When they do something successfully they feel proud of themselves which helps them to build a positive self-esteem and also confidence. They interact with their peers which builds social skills, they learn to have empathy, if they sing, their vocabulary expands and their language is also developed. This all will help learners to be motivated and do better academically. I believe that the integration of arts is only beneficial to learners because it helps the Foundation phase learner develop so much and in so many different areas of their lives and in the phase where the development of these little children is so crucial still.

What I found to be the most interesting was to learn that the integration of arts helped to better learners’ mathemathical performance. When you think of arts and you think of maths they seem like the two subjects that has the most difference between them but this just goes to show on how inclusive arts integration really is. I also found it interesting to learn that art changes learners’ lives and why and how it changes their lives.

I found the theoretical part of the study unit a bit challenging, the reason for this is because I did not know that music can be learned from in so many different ways. The little information on how and why arts changes children was also challenging for me. I would have loved if there were more information included on that topic so that it is fully comprehended.