Artful Learning @ Home with CoTA
To follow is an expanding collection of resources designed to support student learning in a remote setting. The majority of activities and projects are intended to be explored at home with minimal materials, and range from independent work to family-wide inclusion. As with all of our work, please feel free to adapt and adjust the activities to meet your students’ needs.
Wellness Activities
The following art-based activities have been created to encourage mindfulness and enhance mental wellness. Use these activities individually, with family, or with friends and classmates digitally.
Create a personalized quest for wellness using a straw, thick paper and paint to create an intricate labryinth.
Movement Echo is a dance game, where players take turns teaching and learning cool moves.
Eco de Movimiento es un juego de baile, en el que los jugadores se turnan para enseñar y aprender movimientos geniales.
El siguiente proyecto fué diseñado para complementar la Unidad de Empatía y Pensaminto Crítico, ¡Rompe ese Estereotipo! de Sanford Harmony.
Create a self-portrait that highlights what is most important for others to know about you.
Un ejercicio que explora cómo pensamos.
Create a triptych illustration to learn about the internal and external physical cues of different emotions.
Students create a portrait that tells the story of a person or character who is often misunderstood.
Students become a superperson, popping stereotypes with a monologue. They can then share out with household members or through classroom distance learning.
Un ejercicio en resolución de problemas.
Students identify other people’s feelings and perspectives through imagined play.
Un Ejercicio de Pensamiento.
Create a collage about physical attributes and personal characteristics to understand stereotypes.
Create a comic to demonstrate how positive thinking can impact a person’s feelings and actions.
Un Ejercicio que explora cómo pensamos.
Pretend you’re an alien detective who has been sent to Earth to investigate human emotions!
Dance through different forms of weather and emotions!
Create collage illustrations to show the impact positive and negative thoughts have on our feelings and actions.
Create a mini book to remind yourself of relaxation strategies you can use to calm yourself down when you are stressed out over something.
Transform with dance into raindrops, a baby gorilla, feather strokes and different emotions.
Create a collage illustration and a poem that reveals your similarities with others and what makes you unique.
Create a dance with a partner mirroring gestures and emotions.
Un Ejercicio de Empatía y Pensamiento Crítico.
The following project was designed to compliment the Empathy and Critical Thinking Unit, Feelings Detective, at Sanford Harmony.
The following project was designed to compliment the Empathy and Critical Thinking Unit, Pop that Stereotype, at Sanford Harmony.
The following project was designed to compliment the Empathy and Critical Thinking Unit, Pop that Stereotype, at Sanford Harmony.
The following project was designed to compliment the Empathy and Critical Thinking Unit, Recognizing Feelings 2.1, at Sanford Harmony.
The following project was designed to compliment the Empathy and Critical Thinking Unit, Problem Solving 4.2, at Sandford Harmony.
Digital Projects
The following activities and projects have been adapted for online facilitation.
Students research their ancestry and create cultural posters.
Students explore connections to the present and the past through the creation of a living historical document.
Students investigate the daily life, culture, legends, and beliefs of Native people and early explorers of California.
Students become tour guides of their own mapped out land using map symbols and relative locations of places.
Students investigate the arguments, strategies, and tactics of suffragists and anti-suffragists of the Women’s Suffrage Movement leading up to the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
Students investigate the scientists and discoveries of the Scientific Revolution.
Students investigate the accomplishments and challenges of Queen Hatshepsut or Ramses II, design a modern day campaign for #GPOAT, and step into the shoes of the pharaohs.
While learning about national symbols, students also meet math standards by creating geometry-based illustrations of some of our most recognized symbols.
Students explore their responsibilities and improvise a story with a partner.
Students create a precious collection of drawings, sculptures and notes which they hide around their home for safekeeping.
Students investigate the lives of American heroes, bringing one of them to life in a dramatic presentation that includes a question and answer session.
The Civil War is a HUGE topic! Determine key information and create a foldable poster.
Students research a woman who played a significant role during the Revolution then act as a reporter interviewing that woman as if she were alive today, creating a “talk show” or news show with a family member.
Students design an object or mechanism to open a glass jar that has a metal screw on cap, and is much larger than them.
Students develop an experiment where seeds are grown, controlling three variables.
Can you see in the dark? Make an evening shadow puppet show for your neighbors and investigate light and shadow.
How do we read the weather report? Create symbols to document in a charts the weather by your observations and compare that to the weather report.
Create a sculpture that disperses seeds inspired by the way nature spreads seeds.
Build your own hydroponic sculpture and watch it grow!
Design a machine or tool that will help you do normal activities, things you want or need to do, while obeying the 6ft separation distance of the Corona Virus.
Write a song about coral reefs and ocean acidification.
Students create a mixed media diorama to identify and explore the components of an ecosystem, above and below ground.
Students create a model of a new ride for an amusement park.
In this activity, students apply knowledge of rectangles, squares, and right triangles to create designs based a reference image.
Students create a collage illustration that demonstrates/models the understanding of the different transformations including: translation, rotation and reflection.
Students creatively investigate the properties of triangles.
Students create a collage illustration that demonstrates/models the understanding of the different transformations including: translation, rotation and reflection.
Students creatively investigate rectangles.
Journaling Prompts
Each of the following set of prompts is a starting point for a week of creative escape.
Weekly Art Challenges
Weekly opportunities have been designed to engage students in thoughtful art inquiry.
Old Farmer John has an avocado tree on his farm. Over the years the tree has grown really tall; it now reaches 18 feet! Old Farmer John can’t reach the avocados anymore to pick them. They are out of his reach, and he is six feet tall! What can you build to help Old Farmer John safely pick his avocados? No ladders -- that would be too easy!