Celebrating the Arts With The Noisy Paint Box

Children’s literature offers many benefits to children, which include developing imagination, building knowledge, enhancing vocabulary, and offering pleasure. As it promotes these areas of development, literature can also serve as a gateway for curriculum integration. Literature can be a particularly powerful tool in executing a dynamic, integrated music lesson. In this article, the authors share how The Noisy Paint Box (2014), written by Barb Rosenstock and illustrated by Mary Grandpré, provides a context for students to explore the four artistic processes identified in the National Arts Standards in a music context: create, perform, respond, and connect. At the same time, the book provides opportunities to introduce students to artistic processes and practices shared by music, visual arts, literature, and dance.