Natural materials provide children opportunities for artistic engagement, which encourages a dialogue between children and material and provides a platform for children to discuss their perspectives on significant issues like sustainable futures. This article examines the land art characters created by pre-primary education children in the garden…

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,…

This study aimed to improve the education process by enabling children to associate natural environmental experience with art and to include it into aesthetic experience in place-based visual arts applications. Accordingly, answers for subquestions such as how it can be possible for children to create nature-art relation through place-based…

Artists and scientists attempt to understand all manner of things through skills such as observation, classifying, measuring, and making new connections. They share an innate curiosity about the world and how things work. This can be viewed as the common bond that ties the two disciplines together. In this article, Padraig Egan explores how art…

The proposed benefits of participatory arts for older adults continue to attract empirical attention, but how informal group participation aids personal enrichment is not yet fully understood. This qualitative case study of a University of the Third Age 'outdoor sketching group' explores the meanings its members attach to art-making in retirement…

For young children, a found acorn, stone, or lichen-covered branch can be a touchstone of an experience in nature. Children, however, should also be taught to "leave no trace." As the National Park Service advocates, visitors to natural areas should "Preserve the sense of discovery for others by leaving all natural and cultural…

The basis for my article is how, and if, a collaborative land art project can provide opportunities for such co-creating as suggested in the national framework plan for preschools, which explicitly states the child as a co-creator of a shared expressive culture. I further wish to propose land art as a meaningful cultural practice, closely…

An important part of the Progressive Education movement, the playground, influenced John Dewey's educational philosophy of learning. "The playground, particularly during the Progressive reform movement of the early 1900s benefited from the widespread belief that play was child's work. Dewey portrayed children as miniature adults who…

Taking students outside is a great opportunity to make art. In this article, the author describes how her students collaborated with forms in nature to create their own visual structures to communicate ideas. This lesson can be done on the beach, in a sand box on the school playground, in grassy areas, or nature can even be brought into the…

Article details technique of making photograms with blueprint paper. Second-graders brought small objects to school, arranged them indoors in designs, then went outside to duplicate the patterns using blueprint paper. The experience of seeing the sunlight bleach the paper before their eyes is described as both stimulating and particularly…

The document provides art activities for the classroom teacher who is not an art specialist. It contains activities which supplement experiences provided by the art teacher as well as activities designed to measure the achievement level of students in concept skills related to art and the principles of design. The supplement is divided into three…

This guide addresses community-based art learning experiences in both theory and practice. After making a convincing case for community-based art curricula, a wide range of instructional strategies are outlined. Suggested lessons represent visual odysseys beyond the classroom. These focus on the school yard, the city block, a five minute walk, a…

From breathtaking glacial ravines of Yosemite Valley to weeds growing in neglected rain gutters, this book of activities combines art with scientific research questions. The book is designed to help educators encourage children in the upper primary grades to learn more about the natural world and in particular their local environment. Sixty…

The purpose of thise resource guide is to assist the teacher in using art experiences to develop student awareness of the necessity of preventing further destruction of the nation's natural resources. Topics are grouped under 7 headings: (1) purpose of the guide; (2) facts and predictions concerning crises in man's environment; (3) creative…

This curriculum guide for teachers of the emotionally handicapped (K-6) exemplifies the way in which both art concepts and activities can be developed utilizing one block of an urban area in New York City. Visual, tactile, and spatial concepts are presented via miniblock, macroblock, and maxiblock perception. Suggestions for concept development…