The United States has a visually stunning history of documenting its natural lands. In the late 1800s, Hudson River School painters captured national parks in the west (National Park Service, 2017). Ansel Adams is famously known for his rich black-and-white photographs of Yosemite and other national parks from the 1920s. In the 1930s, the Works…

With a growing societal awareness of the importance of getting students outside as part of the school day, students and teachers alike are discovering the joys of taking art class outside. Drawing on natural and built environments in their local community, many art teachers are turning to their own school gardens as a fertile site for inquiry,…

Place-based education incorporates local communities into school curriculum, recognizing the importance of local traditions, communities, and ecosystems, and emphasizing content that has reference to community life and local ecology. One elementary art teacher worked to connect place to her own artistic identity and to her work teaching elementary…

This chapter shares a suite of collaborative artmaking projects, designed to use Arts-based inquiry through an a/r/tographical lens to enable deep learning and the development of pedagogical content knowledge. These projects are underpinned by a desire to provide authentic and engaging learning experiences for Visual Arts pre-service teachers in a…

In this article, Miguel Aguilar describes the process of mental preparation he performs before beginning a new graffiti mural. This may include reviewing recent sketches and his lists of color palettes. Aguilar mind maps ideas he wants to connect, thinking about intentions or the goal he wants to accomplish. Aguilar further states "this…

Having an answer to "When are we ever going to use this in real life?" is important to middle school mathematics teachers. The activity described in this article awakened sixth graders' understanding of how artists use mathematics. By exploring ratio and proportionality in different paintings, students realized the use of proportional…

Art educators should be concerned with teaching their students to make critical connections between the classroom and the outside world. One effective way to make these critical connections is to provide students with the opportunity to engage in community-based art endeavors. In this article, three university art educators discuss engaging…

Last spring, students from several North Carolina middle schools were invited to participate in the annual Celebrate the Arts festival in Columbus Country. Larry Hewett, a local art teacher, had been selected to instruct the middle-school students. Larry's River Rock Circles project was made as the starting point for the Celebrate the Arts…

This study portrayed a picture of kindergarten through 3rd-grade teachers who teach visual arts, their perceptions of the value of visual arts, their visual arts teaching practices, visual arts experiences provided to young learners in school, and major factors and/or influences that affect their teaching of visual arts. The sample for this study…

The author of this article, an art teacher, describes a lesson in which her elementary school students used acrylics to paint a cityscape of Bombay, India. After seeing huge canvas paintings at an art gallery, the students wanted to paint their own. They performed an exercise in which they closed their eyes, thought about the city, and listed all…

The interest and atmosphere generated during the mural painting produced a class cohesiveness and cooperation that could never be achieved in more individual projects. (Author)

An art teacher captured students' interests by bringing a motorcycle into the art workshop as a model. (GB)

Wall space can be a valuable resource for artistic expression. (GB)

Outlines several approaches for planning art activities for elementary school children. (GB)

Author feels that it is important for child artists to relate to the art forms of given periods and societies in their understanding of artistic influences. (Author/GB)