Presented to the Ninth Annual Interdisciplinary UAP-USC Conference on Piagetian Theory and the Helping Professions in 1979, the paper discusses the development of cognitive skills in handicapped children through art activities, and describes some new art-based procedures for assessing and developing such cognitive skills. The procedures in the program deal with conceptual sequential, and spatial skills and are designed to substitute for language in receiving, processing, and expressing abstract concepts that are fundamental to mathematics and reading (i.e., the concepts of space, sequential order, and class). Based on the hypothesis that children who are deficient in linguistic processing may be able to use spatial processing to solve problems and develop concepts, these procedures are designed to stimulate abstract thinking and reasoning and to develop readiness for mathematics and language. Three studies are described, in which handicapped children showed significant gains in expressing concepts of space, order, and class as a result of these new art procedures. (DLS)