Technology in the TK to 3 arts classroom
An explorer for TK to 3 music, dance, and theater teachers. It is built on the NAEYC and Fred Rogers Center position statement on technology for children from birth through age 8, with 2025 guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics and a pediatric occupational therapist.
Does this tool extend what children can do with their voices, bodies, instruments, and imaginations?
This is the central decision: if live singing, moving, playing, and pretending meet the goal just as well, keep the screen off.
The big ideas
Five messages run through the guidance below. Open any one to see what it asks of a TK to 3 music, dance, or theater teacher.
Technology and interactive media are tools for teachers, and like any tool they work when used in the right way, in the right circumstances, by someone skilled with them. That means staying grounded in developmentally appropriate practice: seeing each child as an individual, matching the child's age and development, and responding to the family and cultural context.
Name the musical, movement, or dramatic goal first, then decide whether a screen belongs in the lesson at all.
What effective use looks like
Strong technology use has a consistent set of qualities. Use these as a quick lens on any lesson.
True integration is when the technology becomes routine and nearly invisible: attention stays on the exploration, not the device. In the arts room, the strongest screen moments have children singing, moving, playing, or acting while the screen is on.
Source: Technology and Interactive Media as Tools in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age 8, joint position statement of NAEYC and the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children's Media at Saint Vincent College, adopted January 2012, plus its two-page key messages summary. Content here is paraphrased for teacher use. The statement is from 2012, so the devices and research it references have changed; treat it as a framework. The Current guidance tab adds 2025 perspectives from the American Academy of Pediatrics and a pediatric occupational therapist. NAEYC and the Fred Rogers Center do not endorse specific products.