In this article, the author explores the multimodal poems, digital photographs, and three-dimensional artistic creations of young children who live by the sea. Encouraged by their teachers and adult artists, the children learned to look closely at the sign systems of art and poetry to open up worlds of image creation and metaphor making. Teachers and artists who work with young children to help them see symbolically often move back and forth among the arts. While one adult may work with poetry and another with the visual arts, all are focused on the integration of words, images, and emotions. (Contains 8 figures and 1 footnote.)