Art educators are concerned with exposing their students to contemporary art making practices. They aim to create fresh lessons that expand their understandings of art in today's world while highlighting the importance of imagination. With a personal interest in performance and street art (art forms that have gained popularity in recent years),…

Thomas Locker's book about nature entitled "Water Dance" (1997) provides the basis for this interdisciplinary project on Earth's water cycles. Through thoughtful consideration of the text and art in "Water Dance," students build and express deeper understanding of the water cycle (and the elements within). In addition, they develop the disposition…

Early in her life, Nancy King discovered that stories are rich sources of wisdom, imagination, creativity, and comfort. In this essay, King describes her personal experiences developing and using the collaborative storymaking process with young people and adults in various school settings. The author states that collaborative storymaking…

This document summarizes a study attempting to understand the critical skill of creative visioning. In the study, 20 people who were involved in creativity or creative visioning were interviewed for 1.5-4 hours. Seven central themes emerged from the interviews: (1) the meaning of creative visioning; (2) trusting; (3) imagination; (4) connections;…

Defining creativity as a process that draws upon talents, education, skills, thinking and working styles, and inherent intelligence, and pinpointing motivation as the single most important ingredient in the creativity recipe, this book provides dozens of concrete, hands-on exercises and techniques that can help a parent or teacher keep creativity…

This book is designed to be of assistance to primary school teachers who have had little training in arts and crafts and for use in teacher training colleges. Tested in Nigeria and Jamaica, this manual gives children an opportunity to develop their natural creativity, and also develops accuracy and manual dexterity in hand skills. Lesson plans are…

The classroom activities suggested in this resource booklet, proven successful by South Dakota poet Jack Kreitzer, are designed to spark or increase students' creativity by bringing the exciting language of poetry alive in the elementary and secondary classroom. Introductory comments present thoughts on what poetry is and how it should be taught,…

Designed as a teacher and therapist training tool, this booklet demonstrates how to make several types or kinds of puppets, and how to use them in a variety of classroom situations. The first section includes instructions for the following hand puppets: simple cloth, paper mache, knitted finger, paper bag, and Muppet types. The second section…

Describes a project for fourth graders based on a book by Shel Silverstein. After the teacher read and discussed the book with the students, they acted out the story and wrote original versions. Next, a professional painted an impressionist painting of the story. Finally, the students made their own paintings. (CB)

One of a series of resource manuals written by participants in the University of North Dakota teacher education programs to help teachers develop more open and responsive classrooms, this booklet focuses on the teaching of creative drama. Following an introduction by Vito Perrone, the titles and authors of the articles are as follows: (1) "'They…

This Pennsylvania state curriculum guide provides a rationale and plan for the inclusion and role of arts education in a K-12 curriculum. Part 1, "Actions of the Arts Process," describes concepts related to the terms art, artists, and the arts process and suggests that students need to experience perceiving, responding, understanding, creating,…

A study was conducted to better understand creative visioning, the human ability to make connections. Interviews were conducted with 20 Seattle (Washington) residents, each of whom was involved in creativity or creative visioning. The sample defined creative visioning as a process which encourages the pursuit of new possibilities, dimensions, and…

The 25 strategies described in this book can be used to develop personal creativity, student creativity, and creativity in colleagues and staff members. The strategies are based on investment theory, a psychological theory of creativity, but any one strategy is consistent with many other theories. The investment theory of creativity asserts that…

Developed to be easy and require minimum preparation time, yet give high-impact results, this book offers tried-and-true teacher-tested book projects for primary grades K-3. The book's topics connect curriculum areas: creative writing, science, social studies, and math. Projects outlined in the book require few materials and can be done at…

To enable college students to grapple with their own process of creating, students complete a project that involves collecting a variety of small objects, dividing the objects into two categories, telling a story using all the objects, describing their feelings about the categorization and story-telling activities, and writing about their creative…