The authors' paths crossed seven years ago when they had recently adopted the P4C (Philosophy for Children) method as philosophy teachers. Their shared enthusiasm for P4C resulted in collaborative development and facilitation of different workshops. These programs were specifically tailored for children aged 7-10, particularly those residing in…

Latin American customs and colors play an important role as second graders are introduced to multicultural experiences through food, music, dance, art, and craft. In this article, the author describes a printing project inspired by Guatemalan weavings and amate bark paintings. (Contains 2 online resources.)

The author's school is only 30 minutes from New York City, so every year when second-graders study towns and cities, the students do a project based on New York City landmarks. This year was the Statue of Liberty. The author introduced Peter Max's famous Pop art to her students, and explained that, as the art world kept changing, artists decided…

One can easily find a choice studio. In this choice-based art classroom, the students move comfortably within an organized structure of space, time and materials, managed by the teacher. They are well aware of their responsibilities and their possibilities. The teacher helps them to mine their lives and interests for the content of their…

After creating fish-themed art works for the school's Evening of the Arts, the school moved onshore. In Florida, a tropical climate and casual dress is the norm, so students are familiar with Hawaiian "Aloha" shirts. To begin the lesson, the author displayed several Aloha shirts across the front of the art room. She then gives a quick…

A humid summer haze covers the River Seine and the grassy bank where young men and boys go swimming on Sunday. Everything seems so quiet, still, and very hot. They wear hats to protect them from the hot sun. The artist Georges Seurat used warm tones to give viewers the feeling of the hot sun. Seurat was trying to catch the dazzle of hot sunlight…

In this article, the author describes how her second-graders created their cool polar bears. The students used the elements of shape and texture to create the bears. They used Monet's technique of dabbing paint so as to give the bear some texture on his fur.

In this article, second-graders create a sunflower drawing using pastel techniques that produce similar effects to Vincent van Gogh's brushstrokes. They also learn how layering colors and using white to lighten colors creates depth in their flowers.

The author noticed that, when painting self-portraits, her students struggled with size relationships between the head, neck, and shoulders. In order to address this without having to deal with facial proportions, she had her second-graders take turns drawing a partner from the back. Students began this project by learning about Mary Cassatt,…

This article describes a collaborative painting project that allows first- through third-grade students to work with partners to create a four-inch square of a group painting and learn the basics of mixing paints to produce lights and darks, and tints and shades. One by one, the students worked on the painting in their free time. The author kept a…

In this article, the author describes an art project wherein students used simple shapes and photo references to imagine what they might look like when they are one hundred years old. The project challenged the students technically, intellectually, and emotionally. The artwork stimulated their imagination and their imagination informed their…

Virginia Lee Burton was one of the first author-artists to fully integrate text with images on the printed page, captivating generations of children. She was the founder of the Folly Cove Designers, which is an artist collective known for block printed textiles and design, an artist and a writer, entwining the visual image and written word into a…

The wonderful book, "How Are You Peeling? Foods with Moods" by Saxton Freymann and Joost Elffers inspired a lesson on feelings and expressions for this author's second-grade students. Many students at her school have difficult lives and lots of emotional baggage, resulting in behavioral problems at school. Using the example of Fauvist portraits by…

In conjunction with her school's interest in becoming more "green," this author designed an art project using inexpensive, sturdy, reusable grocery bags. In this article, she describes the different design concepts and art media used by each grade in decorating these bags. (Contains 1 online resource.)

In this article, the author describes an art project for second-grade students based on American Regionalist Grant Wood's most famous painting, "American Gothic," which was modeled by his sister, Nan, and his dentist. This well-loved painting depicting a hard-working farmer and his daughter standing in front of their farmhouse is the project's…