In the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York City there is a woodcarving called a "Yipwon". It is from the remote north-east region of Papua New Guinea and was created by the Yiman people of the Korewori River Region. The Yipwon carvings look like a human skeleton in profile, showing evidence of ribs, heart, and head. The Yipwon…

What excites the author the most is finding something new and turning it into a lesson her students will enjoy and learn from. Lately, she has been most inspired by the work she finds on one website. The lesson began with a brief PowerPoint based on an artist's website. This particular artist--Jennifer Schmitt--does reduction prints using several…

Romero Britto is a wonderful artist for young students to study when learning the building blocks of art and design. Colorful, linear, and full of bold patterns, Britto's work blends a contemporary cubist style and pop art commercial appeal. Themes of this contemporary artist's work include animals, flowers, still life, and people in joyful…

For the past twenty years, a major project for the author's eighth-grade art classes has been a group diorama with plaster figures. The group has to include two to four people participating in a sport or an occupation while showing some kind of action and interaction. Not too long ago, a couple of girls asked to depict the signing of the…

Cutting a few CDs apart with scissors, the author found that the process created somewhat brittle shards. As a result, she started to paint a few with acrylic, finding to her amazement that the paint gave the CDs a leathery, more manageable texture. Upon further experimentation, she found that if the CDs are painted somewhat translucently in…

Even middle school students can have memories of their childhoods, of an earlier time. The art of Romare Bearden and the writings of Paul Auster can be used to introduce ideas about time and memory to students and inspire works of their own. Bearden is an exceptional role model for young artists, not only because of his astounding art, but also…

Transformation is nothing new for artists. From taking a piece of mud and molding it into a sculpture, to drawing a moustache on the "Mona Lisa," artists have the power and the inclination to reinvent things time and again. In this article, the author describes how her middle school students explored the aesthetics of the past by applying…

A time-honored and pervasive tradition has taken root in art classrooms. It goes like this: The art teacher plans experiences, often called "visual problems" (Vieth, 1999, p. 4), for pupils to execute. Students are then encouraged to "solve" these problems in their own way, but the end result, more often than not, is…

Narratives are a wonderful way to allow students to personalize mathematics. In the context of this article, the authors define narratives as short stories, written by students, that contain a mathematical work problem centered on students' lives and interests. These narratives can be supported with art, such as drawings or photographs. When…

The author was surfing the Internet and stumbled upon some amazing and surprisingly beautiful microscopic structures of living organisms. The colors and shapes of these individual forms of life were beautiful, textured, and intricate. In this article, the author describes how her eighth-grade students made tiles inspired by these microscopic…

One of the author's favorite things to do is ride her bike. She finds bike riding to be a therapeutic outdoor adventure. In this article, the author describes how her students made their self-portrait bicycle collages. (Contains 2 online resources.)

With all the noise in the world, the flotsam and jetsam sensory input from the media, from friends, from family, from life, it is an arduous task to have students slow things down and focus on the simple, raw elements of their world. Specifically related to art class, the challenge is how to help students digest the work of Minimalist artists. In…

The author's art program includes students from kindergarten through eighth grade. In pondering the "nearly impossible," he wondered how the entire student population could work together on one art project that could be exhibited at the same time. He wanted each of his 700 students to create an original artwork that would display individual and…

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.…

In this article, the author describes a lesson that evolved from being based solely on observation to incorporating images from imagination. The challenges involved in this lesson span a multiplicity of skills while encouraging students to trust and develop their own creativity. Incorporating both versions--the observed and imagined--into a single…