This book shows that children innately learn a great deal about the arts. The book argues that involvement and immersion are the ways in which children feel welcome to write, move, create, draw, and otherwise express ideas about art and music. It offers teaching suggestions to classroom teachers and non-specialists so classroom reading activities…

This guide helps teachers and students examine the questions "Who are composers?" and "How do they compose?" In addition to the musical component of the inquiry, the guide also explores the world of writers and how they write and visual artists and how they create. Materials in the guide encourage students to express their…

Teens who have experienced the death of a parent, grandparent, friend, or relative often find it difficult to grieve openly. When adults whom teens trust are aware of the cycle of grief, they can provide a safe atmosphere to allow teens to experience the turmoil of the intense and conflicting emotions in order to move toward healing. This guide is…

This case study of artist/researcher Ursula Kolbe was undertaken in 1998 to extend understanding of the complexity of the process of teaching and learning in respect to children's interactions with visual arts materials. The following questions prompted the research: how does a teacher who is also an artist work with young children? and does a…

This guide is intended to be a tool to help educators and curriculum developers create curricula that reflect a comprehensive approach to learning and teaching in and through art. The guide is linked directly to the National Standards for Arts Education. The guide has several components, including: (1) 18 ability areas in art based on the four art…

Aesthetic education offers instructional methodologies and subject area content that make art an important part of general education. Instruction in this area should emphasize artistic heritage and appreciation as well as production. Curriculum reform efforts are reviewed, and recommendations for changes in teacher education are made. (PP)

Works of art can be a valuable tool for teaching reading skills, such as visual discrimination, language experience, word recognition, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and other language arts skills. Classroom activities based on art work are described. Sources of art reproductions are noted. (PP)

In this study of four hyperactive elementary children, the effects of painting and physical activities on attention-to-task were observed. Both techniques brought improvement, the pleasure of the activities seeming to provide an intrinsic reward which the children internalized, bringing increased attention-to-task to other classroom activities.…

The purpose of this study was: (1) to examine how artistic development is fostered in the playgroup setting; (2) to discover if between-playgroup effects are apparent in the developmental levels of children's painting, and (3) if such differences occur, to consider the relevance of supervisor behavior to these differences. Subjects were 48…

Discusses an art activity for fifth-grade students that focuses on the teaching technique called scratchboard. Explains that the subject of the assignment was sunflowers. States that sunflowers make good subject matter for children since the shape is geometric. Addresses how to create the scratchboard sunflowers. (CMK)

Describes an art lesson for high school seniors in an intermediate oil painting class. Explains that the teacher set up a still life with a ladder, easel, and a stool with a white background to capture the shadows. States that the students painted their still life in oil. (CMK)

Describes two activities (domain projects and process portfolios), used in a middle school setting, exemplifying a multiple intelligence (MI) approach to art. Proposes a format for infusing MI into art instruction at all grade levels. (DAJ)

Focuses on the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) (California) experiences for understanding how the arts must compete for resources. Explores how a cluster of schools in Los Angeles tried to implement visual arts programs addressing the Getty-Fairfax Project (a K-12 arts education project) in detail. (CMK)

Describes an art project that allows seventh and eighth grade students to participate in the "Middfest" in Middletown, Ohio, that honors a different country each year. Explains that the students created 10 feet high paintings of Greek philosophers for the Middfest focus on Greece. (CMK)