The purpose of this study was to determine the benefit of an art program to children and youth living in an emergency housing facility. Factors leading to homelessness are explored and examples of the positive influence of art for children experiencing crisis and trauma are presented. Through action research, an art program was implemented where…

Creating clay animals and their habitats with second-grade students has long been one of the author's favorite classroom activities. Students love working with clay and they also enjoy drawing animal homes. In this article, the author describes how the students created a diorama instead of drawing their clay animal's habitat. This gave students…

The induction cooker is a common appliance nowadays. How does it work? Why is it not possible to use aluminium utensils with it? What experiments can be carried out with it (at different levels) and not only in physics lessons? Searching for the answers to these and other questions is the purpose of this article. (Contains 5 figures.)

This article explores how student teaching experiences provoke preservice art teachers to rethink curriculum and pedagogy as an organic and living space that is connected to place, community, and local knowledge. Based on a larger qualitative study of urban preservice art education student teachers, the journeys of two student teachers are…

Visitors to the campus of Orland High School (OHS) will never question that they have stepped into a world of the masses: kids, activity, personalities, busyness, and playfulness--a veritable cloud of mild bedlam. The wall of ceramic faces that greets a visitor in the school office is another reminder of the organized chaos that the teachers…

Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), author of "Out of Africa," said, "God made the world round so people would never be able to see too far down the road." The author embraced this wonderful thought by venturing on a three-week journey to Kenya and Tanzania in search of grand adventure. In this article, the author shares her adventure…

Tales of love and hate, of athleticism, heroism, devotion to gods and goddesses that influenced myth and culture are a way of sharing ancient Greece's rich history. In this article, the author describes how her students created their own Greek-inspired clay vessels as artifacts of their study. (Contains 6 online resources.)

This article describes how to make a clay camera. This idea of creating functional cameras from clay allows students to experience ceramics, photography, and painting all in one unit. (Contains 1 resource and 3 online resources.)

While an empty cardboard box from a ream of copy paper may be the most coveted box among teachers in the author's school, for other people, brass boxes from India, Khokhlova lacquer boxes from Russia, and puzzle boxes from Japan are more the type that are collected and admired. Whether it is used for storage or decoration, a box can evoke a sense…

Art history can be a little dry at times, but the author is always trying to incorporate new ways of teaching it. In this article, she describes a project in which students were to create a place setting out of clay that had to be unified through a famous artist's style. This place setting had to consist of at least five pieces (dinner plate, cup…

The author of this article describes how as the visual-arts teacher of Tecumseh Public School, she brought the entire school and community together by creating a mural that promoted belonging. The mural involved tapping into the the creativity of all 400 students from kindergarten through eighth grade at Tecumseh while creating a work of art with…

As part of a Professional Learning Community (PLC), the author is asked to focus on the four essential questions of learning when developing projects: (1) What is it teachers want their students to learn?; (2) How will teachers know if each student has learned it?; (3) How will teachers respond when some students do not learn it?; and (4) How can…

Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party," an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth century art, consists of an enormous ceremonial banquet arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history. Inspired by this piece of art, the author devised a lesson for…

The author finds clay a wonderful introductory medium for high-school studio art. It is not intimidating and gives students the opportunity to express directly with their hands. This article describes the author's clay project that she introduced to her students. The clay project required students to portray their inside and outside personalities…

In this article, the author describes how to make soup bowls as a class project. The slab method is used to construct the soup bowls, but bowls could just as easily be made on the potter's wheel for advanced students, using the pinch method with beginners, or with the coil method for intermediate students. Found objects from around a garage or…