Describes eight art activities using ceramics. Elementary students created ceramic tiles to depict ancient Egyptian and medieval European art, made ceramic cookie stamps, traced bisque plates on sketch paper, constructed clay room-tableaus, and designed clay relief masks. Secondary students pit-fired ceramic pots and designed ceramic Victorian…

Work media must be carefully charted for children with special needs who experience sensory overload. A weaving project for disabled children requires simple materials, looms, and exercises. (SR)

When fifth-grade students were first introduced to abstract imagery in printmaking, the adjustment from figurative shapes to nonrepresentative forms was difficult for them. To make them more comfortable with the development of abstract ideas and forms, the students' initials were used. (RM)

Fifth-grade students used their bodies to form a design on blueprint paper. The end result was a frieze, which was used to brighten hallways. (RM)

Describes six elementary art activities which integrate art with other subjects. Students make cloth patchwork banners, bark rubbings, posters, full-sized paper cut-outs of singing children, and optical drawings. An arts enrichment day for bilingual children with visual arts, music, and dance demonstrations is also discussed. (AM)

Describes how teaching secondary art students to perceive negative shape improved their drawings of a bicycle, a visually complex mechanical structure. Concentrating on negative shape forces students to work with the relationships between shapes and their relative sizes. (AM)

Presents detailed instructions for the design and construction of simple reed baskets. Directions cover materials preparation, basic designs, and methods for giving baskets a finished appearance. (AM)

Presented is a satirical look at a computer (Art Stabilization Systematizer) which is designed to replace art teachers. (KC)

The author suggests collage with black and white paper as a simple project for teaching shape and visual design. (SJL)

Actor Leonard Nimoy, currently touring in a one-man show about Vincent Van Gogh, offers his personal recollections of schooling and art and his concerns for arts education for today's children. (SJL)

Suggesting that the annual museum field trip does not provide students with sufficient exposure to great works of art, the author advocates daily use of quality art reproductions in the classroom, supplemented by discussion, puppetry activities, and games. (SJL)

Clay artists occasionally turn out laughter provoking ceramics purely intended to amuse the viewer. Topsy-turvy is a project which contains ceramic "whizkiddery". While the essential "scheme of beauty" does not prevail in these sculptures, this kind of project provides fun for the artist or student. (Author/RK)