Spry Middle School's annual eighth-grade trip to Washington, District of Columbia, coincided with the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian. The museum, with its distinctive curvilinear architecture covered in Kasota limestone, stands as a wonderful testament to the rich culture and history of the many and diverse Native American…

Interactive art activities can empower children and adults to experience art as active participants rather than passive spectators. Fayetteville State University's Art Education program in North Carolina has established Panorama Kids, mural projects designed by kids and painted by community volunteers. As art students can attest, art is very much…

In this article, the author describes a culmination activity for a technology unit wherein students would have to create a work of art on the computer that was as artistic as any painting done using oils or acrylics. The painting lesson was based on the song and book, "America the Beautiful," by Katharine Lee Bates and illustrated by Neil Waldman.

The original Moko Jumbie was a spirit dancer from West Africa. "Moko" is a West African word that refers to gods and "Jumbie" means ghost. In West Africa, Moko Jumbies are known to kidnap and eat disobedient children, steal dreams and see into evildoers' hearts and terrorize them. They walk through villages on 10- to…

Art studio experiences can meaningfully integrate multiple curricular discipline areas. Through a study of public visual expression, from historic labyrinths to contemporary graffiti, connections can be made to art forms related to spiritual realms and ceremonial rituals. Such activities can also serve as a springboard for writing. In this…

Australian Aboriginal culture is rich, complex and fascinating. The art of Aboriginal Australians shows a great understanding of the earth and its creatures. This article presents an activity which has been designed as a multi-age project. The learning outcomes have been written to suit both younger and older students. Aspects of the project could…

In this article, the author describes a class project wherein preschoolers gained an enriched experience learning art history through engaging in various activities: (1) listening to a storybook; (2) viewing images; (3) doing movement; and (4) producing a masterpiece. The author describes how the children painted their interpretation of Mona Lisa…

Murals have become a powerful art form for portraying antiwar, human rights, social justice, and human dignity issues. Educators and artists have conducted mural workshops with adolescents in international settings to educate them about peace, human rights, and cultural tolerance. Learning with murals has been shown to be pedagogically meaningful…

The world of fine arts can seem a bit intimidating to a student, and it is part of the teacher's role to help ease students into that world. One of this author's goals as an art and design educator is to bring the world of his students into classroom projects, providing a sense of comfort and familiarity in the context of learning something new.…

This article introduces a new "perspective" on the typical landscape painting. It is an opportunity for art students to study the local ecosystem and native trees in their community. Other aspects of this assignment are the study of Symbolism and a new focus on the natural designs created by exposed tree roots. (Contains 1 web link.)

In this article, the author shares an activity she introduced to her students. In this activity, students recognize the beauty of their own neighborhood and learn about cropping a photo for better composition. (Contains 1 online resource.)

Teens have issues! They talk about suicide and war. They experiment with drugs, drinking and smoking. Their lives may have been touched by abuse, gangs, or guns. Young people worry about these issues and many others as they work out their emerging identities and race toward their futures. This article discusses how the teachers in Voyager House…

From 1899 until his death in 1926, Claude Monet painted a series of watercolor landscapes of his water lily garden and Japanese bridge in Giverny, France. Monet eventually abandoned the banks entirely as subject matter and concentrated solely on the water. These paintings, particularly "The Water Lilies," show a surface in which the shimmering…

The author had just begun Ann Johnson's "Friendship Fence" lesson from the February 2007 issue of "SchoolArts" with her third graders. In this lesson, students created self-portraits on individual fence pickets that were then combined to make a fence. In this article, the author describes how this idea was applied to the wall…

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…