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…

Students are often encouraged to work together with their classmates, sometimes with other classes, occasionally with kids at other schools, but rarely with kids across the country. In this article the authors describe the Create Your State project, a collaborative nationwide project inspired by the Texas Chair Project wherein the artist, Damien…

This article discusses rock art which was the very first "art." Rock art, such as the images created on the stone surfaces of the caves of Lascaux and Altimira, is the true origin of the canvas, paintbrush, and painting media. For there, within caverns deep in the earth, the first artists mixed animal fat, urine, and saliva with powdered minerals…

Henri Matisse's painting, "Sideboard," opens the door to the author's first-grade students' lesson on still life. This lesson is about the process of designing, the act of making decisions, and the knowledge of one's own preferences. In this article, the author describes how the students made still life with fruit and seashells.

The sixth-grade art curriculum includes world cultures and the art-history timeline. This lesson was created as the authors were developing relevant projects. They also presented it at an Ohio Art Education Association fall conference as part of their thematic unit, "Art of the Himalayas." As teachers, they were fascinated by the annual…

When he painted a portrait of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II (1552-1612), Giuseppe Arcimboldo used his imagination, and portrayed him as "Vertumnus," the Roman god of vegetation and the seasons. It's fun to find the different fruits, vegetables and flowers he used: pea-pod eyelids, a gourd for the forehead. Court painters of the time usually…

At first glance, a Zentangle creation can seem intricate and complicated. But, when you learn how it is done, you realize how simple it is. Zentangles are patterns, or "tangles," that have been reduced to a simple sequence of elemental strokes. When you learn to focus on each stroke you find yourself capable of things that you may have once…

Art making has been theorized as a way for children to develop the capacity to participate in social and cultural transformation. Yet, little research has been done to examine the role of art making in children's development as participants in society. This study used ethnographic methods to investigate children's art making in elementary school.…

The purpose of this study was to examine meanings of play among children. Thirty-eight students aged 7-9 years from a suburban public school in Western Canada participated in focus groups. Data analysis revealed participants saw almost anything as an opportunity for play and would play almost anywhere with anyone. However, they perceived parents…

Clay is one of the most satisfying mediums for children to work with. It's relatively inexpensive, and the texture and changes that take place with the clay during firing make it irresistible. Molding clay from rolled-out slabs of clay is an easy way to make simple, shallow vessels or display pots. In this article, the author describes how her…

This article describes the author's experience in implementing a Wish Tree project in her school in an effort to bring the school community together with a positive art-making experience during a potentially stressful time. The concept of a wish tree is simple: plant a tree; provide tags and pencils for writing wishes; and encourage everyone to…

As a part of a larger project, this study focused primarily on Finland-Swedish ninth-graders' "productive" arts experiences (involving music-making, acting, writing, painting/drawing, dancing), as these had been reported when the pupils had been asked to write down descriptions of "strong" experiences in arts areas (music,…

This article describes the pilot of a school-based creative group-counseling program for children called ArtBreak, a choice-based studio art experience based on the restorative possibilities of art making delineated in the expressive therapies continuum (ETC; Kagin & Lusebrink, 1978). The ETC features a developmental hierarchy in relation to how…

This article presents a multimedia painting lesson based on chickens and their habitats. It describes how the author launched this lesson. Before launching this lesson, the author's third-grade students practice techniques for using tempera paint along with a variety of tools for printmaking. They have knowledge of primary and secondary colors,…

In this article, the author discusses how to create an art activity that would link the computer-created business cards of fourth-grade students with an upcoming school-wide medieval event. Creating family crests from copper foil would be a great connection, since they, like business cards, are an individual's way to identify themselves to others.…