Art Integration Website Resources

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In order to for future elementary and secondary educators to generate arts integrated lessons, I researched about three dozen websites that had cross content and art integrated lesson plans. Most incorporate only one form of art so as educators we’ll need to combine lessons and/or expand the lessons on our own to incorporate more CRISPA aspects. I have separated the websites that I thought the most helpful in two categories. The first grouping contains sites that have easily navigable lesson plans ideas where you typically can put in a content area, such as math or science for instance, and then select an art form that you would like to integrate although some sites only have visual or language art integration and not music, theatre and dance. The second grouping is not a list of “go to” sites with an abundance of specific lesson plans, but nonetheless are valuable resources providing tips and strategies for art integration and multi-sensory education.

Group One ~ Lesson Plan Ideas

The Denver Art Museum http://creativity.denverartmuseum.org/

This is the website that was presented to us at DAM on Thursday.

Artsonia http://www.artsonia.com/teachers/lessonplans/

As part of the national Art Education Association (NAEA), Artsonia is an online gallery of student artwork and lesson plans. You need to sign up for this site but it is free. You can also submit your own lesson plans to share in the Artsonia community.

Edutopia http://www.edutopia.org/stw-arts-integration-resources-lesson-plans#graph1

Edutopia does offer ideas and lesson plans that also integrate dance, language and visual arts providing common core standards and objectives, as well as provide templates to create your own.

Education Closet http://educationcloset.com/

Education Closet is an easy to navigate site that has lesson plans that incorporate dance, music, drama, and visual arts as well as strategies and articles that can deepen your knowledge and understanding of art integration and its benefits.

Lesson Plans Page http://lessonplanspage.com/

Combine contents and grade to get several samples of lessons in most cases. The lessons that do come up are generally very thorough with objectives, instructions, materials and time needed, etc. Although not all of them are specifically aligned with the common core standards, many of them do specify the standards.

Arts Integration Grant

http://schooltalkdev.palmbeach.k12.fl.us/groups/artsintegrationgrant/wiki/97f10/

This site has many lessons that incorporate language and visual arts, music, dance, theatre into math, science social studies and history as well as other useful information.

ArtsEdge http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/educators/lessons.aspx

Currently, there are 187 different lessons integrating theatre, dance, music, literary, media or visual arts to several other contents including physical education, technology and geography. The lessons are comprehensive providing an overview with learning objectives, preparation information, instruction steps, and standards included in the lesson.

Group Two ~ Art Integration & Multi-Sensory Resources

Artful Thinking http://www.pzartfulthinking.org/overview.php

Mentioned by DAM presenter on Thursday, Artful Thinking is the Harvard developed program that believes incorporating works of visual art and music in curriculum strengthen student thinking and learning.

Arts Integration http://artsintegration.com/

A clean, easy site that offers research information on incorporating visual art, dance/movement and theatre/drama into education and offers templates for creating your own. However, the lesson plan samples portion is a bit thin.

Dick Blick http://www.dickblick.com/lesson-plans/

A popular artists material resource site, Dick Blick also has hundreds of lessons although they are not specifically organized by cross content information. Rather this site can be used for general visual art ideas as well as artists materials to purchase.

Lesson Planet http://www.lessonplanet.com/

This site costs $4.99 per month but claims to have over 400,000 lesson plans and new ideas for cross-curricular lessons.

Art21 http://www.pbs.org/art21/

Art21 is a PBS produced and broadcasted seven season series of art in the twenty-first century specifically created for educators. Educators' Guides support the use of contemporary art in classroom and community settings by empowering educators to explore the artists, ideas, and themes being explored in art today, and encouraging them to interpret these ideas for individual student needs. The Educators Guide and additional online content introduce opportunities for critical thinking and creative problem solving relevant to middle-school, high-school, and college students. The content can be easily adapted for younger or older groups. Guides include additional information about each of the artists, as well as Before Viewing, During Viewing, and After Viewing questions and suggestions for hands-on activities. These suggestions are interdisciplinary and support various subject areas, including the Visual and Performing Arts, Language Arts, and Social Studies.

MoMa (Museum of Modern Art) http://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning

Download and customize slide shows, worksheets, and other resources for use in the classroom or for independent study of famous artists and works of art and the themes they explored. This is a site to use as a resource and ideas but does not contain lesson plans.

GrAfFiTi ArT!

Kids have a fascination with graffiti. I think it's a combination of the expressiveness, the outlandishness of it, to the mystique of "teaching" it ~ is she really going to encourage private property defacement? By the time there were walls, people were writing on them; from the caves of Lascaux to the modern day defacement of property. Graffiti style has taken hold and has become mainstream so why not embrace it and take the opportunity to educate children on the history and the respectful use of the art form?

In my last week's summer art camp graffiti class we focused on the history of graffiti in America and the ability to draw in a bold and simplified manner. The kids produced personal and stunning work with creative lettering that incorporated the basics of perspective and isometric drawing. We worked on both small scale personal work and large scale murals emphasizing community & collaboration.

Piet Mondrian

Patterns, lines, & shapes all with the goal of creating visual balance is what we've been working on the last few weeks. We used a combination of markers and watercolors then finished it off with gluing black strips of paper to separate the grid. Crayola makes some beautiful colors in their watercolor paints that seem to last a bit longer than some other brands. The end result was really nice.

When the students are finished I encourage them to help others. This collaboration usually yields happier students.
 

Community Quilt

The second graders at my placement are a bit more challenging than all of the other grades. They are beginning to assert their independence and test their boundaries with each other. My mentor teacher was going to be out for a day and I had to come up with a one day project quick. I really wanted something that would be a group project so they could practice working as a group and give them more of a sense of community while still giving them freedom of expression and personal choice. I also wanted to incorporate some math and history. So, I went out looking for ideas and came across this paper quilt project.

This turned out to be the perfect project and one of the kids all time favorite. We had been working on creating patterns in the previous project and talked about how we see patterns in nature as well as our behavior so the goal was to create their own patterns within the given framework of the three sections the protractor created on each quarter square.

The kids got more and more excited as they saw their community quilt come together. They worked harder, got along, and praised each other for the good work they were doing. Afterwards, I took photos of each "quilting bee's" quilt and laminated miniature versions of them to hand out to each one of the kids.

This did only take one class period and it had me gluing and pasting like a mad woman! You'll notice that I messed up the combinations in the first two ~ but, by the last class I was more careful and put it together correctly.

The Wild & Crazy World of Architecture

At the elementary school where I am currently student teaching, I was asked to teach an after school class on architecture. The class is comprised of ten kids ranging in age from 2nd to 5th grade. After chatting briefly about their interest in architecture I showed them a quick Prezi presentation on some unconventional architecture for inspiration. Various well- and lesser-known architects' work was featured as well as some finalists from a futuristic skyscraper competition. This really got them excited. For our first project, the kids sketched a cityscape from their imagination based upon the style of James Rizzi from a lesson plan that I found here. Due to their different developmental stages and interests, I gave them a bit more freedom of choice in their colors and design elements than this lesson indicates. A few completed the project so we'll finish up this week and move on to other elements of an architect's job. Here are the completed ones:

At work on their projects:

Easter Egg Experiment ~ Natural Dyes

The end result:  very natural looking!

Happy Easter! This year we decided to have a little bit of an experiment with using natural dyes right out of the frig and pantry. Having recently finished a handmade paper project dyed with food such as spinach and beets with my second graders, I was ready to move on to dying eggs. I came across an article on natural dyes for Easter Eggs here that intrigued me with the use of coffee grinds and red cabbage. So, my stepson (and partner in crime in all creative endeavors) and I chose coffee grounds, red cabbage, turmeric, & beets seen below:

Boiling for 15 minutes first to release the color; then add eggs for minimum 30 minutes or until desired color is achieved.

Boiling beets

 

 

Rubberband wrapped eggs

The biggest surprise was that the red cabbage actually turned the eggs a deep teal blue! What was also unexpected was that the beets only turned the eggs a pale peach with small spots of pink. I ended up leaving the eggs in the water all night because after 45 minutes of boiling, they still were very pale in color (although the red cabbage eggs were a lovely shade of a bright robin eggs blue at that time). In the morning, the coffee grounds did turn the shell a strong brown although the color seemed to flake off more easily than the other colors. All of the eggs seemed to have a crystallized finish to them.

Next year; silk-dyed tie eggs!

Sunday Love

Menswear Dog!

Sunday Love

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