For centuries people from around the world have celebrated storytelling and puppetry for their educational and social functions. In the comprehensive curriculum, storytelling combined with puppet performances enriches the classroom experience by providing students with opportunities to engage in open dialogue, creativity, and structured play.…

Children and burgeoning adolescents' creativity blossom in play-based environments. Likewise, students as active social agents have the opportunity to examine the structures and processes that shape them. The photographic image intimates an aura of credibility, providing the students pause to reflect upon their socialized interactions. These…

For several years, the author has taught a six-week ceramics course to students in grades six through eight. This is an elective class, so only interested and passionate students sign up. In past years, she has given three different assignments using slab, coil, and pinch construction techniques, which allowed for individual creative expression.…

A great start for the semester, this pinwheel project provides a good dose of art history, and a variety of media and techniques. It also teaches students how to clean up and store things properly. Five artists are introduced, each with a different art medium and technique. In this activity, students are expected to: (1) study works by five famous…

In this article, the authors describe how mathematics teachers and art teachers were able to enthusiastically engage seventh- and eighth-grade students in an interdisciplinary activity focused on scaling, proportional reasoning, and measurement by recreating artwork on a famous private collection. Using the artwork from The Barnes Foundation in…

After reading "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, this author was excited to introduce the story to her art-club students in grades five through seven, and to incorporate the message into an art lesson. She was inspired to use the story because it causes students to become globally aware of other people and…

Writing about the teaching artist practice should mean writing about art making. As both teacher and artist, the authors are required to be cognizant of their own art-making processes, both how it works and why it is important to them, in order to make this process visible to their students. They also need the same skills to write about how and…

In this article, the author describes how her seventh-grade art students captured an image of a stuffed animal in the "whole-to-part" drawing technique using chalk pastels. Shading with chalk pastels can give a gradual change in value from dark to light. The shading and color changes the mood of the original drawing, and adds texture, too. Chalk…

In the December 1997 issue of "SchoolArts" is a lesson titled "Blue Willow Story Plates" by Susan Striker. In this article, the author shares how she used this lesson with her middle-school students many times over the years. Here, she describes a Blue Willow plate painting project that her students made.

Art teachers are constantly seeking innovative ideas, approaches and media to incorporate into fresh and inspiring lessons. In this article, the author describes how her class created relief or mosaic-like self-portraits by gluing or attaching multiples of any chosen objects or materials onto a surface.

Sometimes, the inspiration for an art idea comes from the strangest and most unexpected places! The author wanted to provide students in grades 5-7 in a fine-arts module an opportunity to be creative in a unique and inexpensive way, while incorporating a three-dimensional element. Since she personally enjoys thumbing through "Architectural…

In this article, the author describes a landscape project using Grant Wood's paintings as an example. As part of the project, the students are required to include a barn in their picture. This project is a great opportunity to study an Iowa artist who did landscape painting and to study perspective. This is also an excellent project for teaching…

It's funny to think of the way an idea for an art lesson begins and how it has a way of changing into something completely different. That is what happened with this lesson, which was originally going to be about a springtime garden. In this article, the author describes an art lesson on collograph printmaking inspired by the poem "A Vampire's…

While an empty cardboard box from a ream of copy paper may be the most coveted box among teachers in the author's school, for other people, brass boxes from India, Khokhlova lacquer boxes from Russia, and puzzle boxes from Japan are more the type that are collected and admired. Whether it is used for storage or decoration, a box can evoke a sense…

Films are multimodal, often memorable, and change one's way of thinking. Films provide narratives and visual metaphors that function as tools for one's imagination and learning. No other film has amplified this phenomenon in the United States more than the "Star Wars" Cycle. "Star Wars" exemplifies the multidimensionality of…