One afternoon during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown, as I was retooling my in-person courses for online instruction, I took a break to see how the educators and artists I follow on Instagram were faring. As I scrolled through a variety of posts, I happened upon an image showing a page torn from the 1940 children's book "Lentil"…

Art is all about the process of exploration. The final results are less important than what a child imagines, experiences, and learns along the way. Packed with a year's worth of art projects kids can create out of everyday objects and recycled materials. From buttons to Bubble Wrap and rocks to socks, the author shows how to plan exciting art…

The arts have their place in every facet of a school, and the library is no exception. Thinking beyond traditional definitions, arts education could include teaching creative problem solving as well as continuous questioning of issues and ideas. The media center is the perfect venue to showcase students' efforts in the arts. This article gives…

This article aims to explore the issues that face primary school teachers when responding to children's drawings. Assessment in art and design is an ongoing concern for teachers with limited experience and confidence in the area and, although children's drawings continue to be a focus of much research, the question of what it is that teachers say…

This article describes an integrated art and early literacy project entitled, Picture Partners". The main purpose of the project was to explore how young children create and express meaning through art. Children's responses, both written and spoken, were included because accompanying modes of expression expand the nature and content of their…

The author conducted a descriptive case study that used artmaking to investigate the phenomenon of representation of personal and cultural identities. Set within the middle school visual arts classroom, the study focused on three female, dual-culture 6th-grade students. "Dual-culture" is defined in this context as a person born in the…

This visual journey, which revisits childhood art as an entry point to inquiry centred on my landscapes of meaning as an educator, represents a self portrait about identity and place that is told from the multiple subjective geographies of self. My collection of childhood artwork offers a different lens to understand historical conditioning and…

The author presents three fragments from the art work of a class of American elementary school children to illustrate the imaginative power of children's thought and language.

Kids can pack their shovel and pail, slather on the sunscreen and get ready to create their best artwork yet this summer. Art can be the one activity that you can take to the beach, the lake and special faraway places this summer. Being an artist on your vacation is an added dimension to how you see and experience the world you visit during this…

In this article, the author introduces the concept of flat pack toys. Flat pack toys are designed using a template on a single sheet of letter-sized card stock paper. Before being cut out and built into a three-dimensional toy, they are scanned into the computer and uploaded to a website. With the template accessible from the website, anyone with…

Many students find it difficult to draw complex subjects. Suggested to help elementary students is a method in which they draw eyes from the center out. Observing detail, breaking an area down into small parts, and then connecting them to complete the whole also facilitates reproduction of a variety of objects. (IS)

Young Artists is the annual exhibition of student art work from the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, public schools, which is displayed from late May to early September in the museum of the Philadelphia Civic Center. The program is described and some of the winning artwork is reproduced. (RM)

A teacher or art specialist who would like to initiate kite activities will draw confidence from beginning with proven, class-tested designs, easy to make and decorate, sure to fly, using inexpensive materials. Instructions for making a Vietnamese kite and a stapled sled kite are provided. (RM)

Presented are techniques that elementary and secondary art teachers can use to help students evaluate their own works of art. These include mapping and diagramming, tracings, coverings, cutting apart and placing together, estimating, framing, enlarging and reducing, simplification and elaboration, projecting, playful tools, celebrations and…

How second graders made three-dimensional forms using construction paper scraps is described. (RM)