Projects

Projects are co-designed by artist-teacher teams to meet the needs of individual classes.
The following projects demonstrate the power of the arts to make learning meaningful and engaging in the elementary classroom. Lesson plans outline the processes students participate in throughout a project, and are meant to serve as guides rather than comprehensive instructions. We hope that you find these projects inspiring. Adapt, modify or simplify these projects to best support your students in becoming active participants in their own learning.

Exploring Life Cycles

Second-grade students at Flying Hills create short plays about a variety of natural life cycles. These include performances pertaining to the life cycles of frogs, butterflies, and/or plants. The final
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Immigration Nation- Hope and Hardship Dance Theatre

Fifth graders weave together social studies, history, and English language arts to create a dance piece entitled ”Immigration Nation.” Over the course of this project, students practice the art of
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Anti-Bully Campaign

In looking at the pivotal theme of injustice within the literary story Matilda, by Roald Dahl, students identify various forms of mistreatment they witness at school and home. Through much
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Art, Orbits and Emotion

First graders learning about character traits and feelings as part of their ELA curriculum. They use line and color qualities to represent feelings/emotions evoked by musical tracks played in the
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Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief Artists’ Books

Through in-depth class discussions and independent construction, students embark on the hero’s journey as they create artists’ books based on Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick
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Depicting the Sun, Moon, and Stars

First-grade students combine visual arts projects with creative movement and narration to depict patterns of the sun, moon, and stars. Students complete sketches, drawings, paintings, and sculptures of the sun,
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Ratios: Math + Art

“Math is a language through which we tell specific stories about the world.” Sixth-grade students use visual artwork to represent math concepts. Students learn to recognize math not only in
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Close Observations of Rocks and Minerals in the Geology Lab

Students become amateur geologists as they transform their classroom into a geology laboratory. They examine and evaluate specimens of rocks, minerals, and fossils from the Natural History Museum. Students explore
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Migration of the Overlanders: A Musical Representation

Throughout this project, students investigate and define the events leading up to the gold rush. From the moment John Polk encouraged families to move west for new opportunity, all the
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California History: Voices from the Past

In exploring early California history, students ponder, “What did the missionaries wish to accomplish? How did the Native Americans receive these new visitors? What relationships were formed among soldiers, missionaries,
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Exploring Ancestors and Culture through Movement

In this culturally rich creative movement project, students reflect, dance, write, and speak about their ancestors—the countries they came from, how they arrived in America, their stories and valued artifacts,
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Gold Rush Protagonists: Biographical Portraits Overview

By extensively researching the Gold Rush period and the effect this massive migration had on California towns and mining sites, students develop a biographical portrait representing one of the period’s
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Using the Visual Arts to Examine Characteristics of Fossils

In exploring a unit on fossils, students become paleontologists and botanists by trying their hand at a variety of art activities illustrating the fossilization of ancient plants and animals. “Fossil”
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Developing Observational and Engineering Skills in a Study of Plants

Combining and applying the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics with sculpture, students construct two-dimensional and three-dimensional models of plants at differing scales. Recording their scientific observations and inquiry of a
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