619.677.0751 Projects are co-designed by artist-teacher teams to meet the needs of individual classes.
The following projects demonstrate the power of art to make learning meaningful and engaging. Lesson plans 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.
How Can We Solve This Problem? A First-Grade Reader’s Theatre Exploration of Making Positive Choices
First graders explore citizenship, rules, and making positive choices in a collaboration of acting, writing, and reader’s theatre. In this project, students role-play and use real-life situations to create scenes,
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Exploring Collaboration and Narratives through Photography
Students work collaboratively in groups to create photo collages synthesizing their comprehension of photography techniques with chronological storytelling. After learning and applying a series of photographic techniques, such as perspective
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Wearable Sculptures of Animal Adaptations
Third-grade students embody the spirit of animals after creating wearable sculptures of animal adaptations. Children begin by learning to carefully observe animals up close—actual specimens from the Natural History Museum—and
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The War That Saved My Life Artists’ Books
Using a variety of illustration techniques, students create richly textured artists’ books as they perform a close reading of The War That Saved My Life, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Through
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Penguins at Play
Learning comes naturally and spontaneously through play, and this project focuses on using play to make learning fun and engaging for kinder students. To align with their physical science unit
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Character Transformation Books
Each week, students collectively examine the transformation of characters in Kevin Henkes’s books. Independently, students create weekly pages to be housed in their literary accordion and bookmark books. The first
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Flood Barrier Design Challenge
Students combine engineering with visual art and collaboration in this flood-barrier design challenge project. After developing their observation, drawing, and note-taking skills through a series of observational drawing activities, students
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Modeling Energy Transfer with Creative Movement and Visual Art
In this project, students integrate creative movement, visual art, NGSS Physical Science, and English Language Arts writing. Students imagine what energy looks like and create a prop to symbolize it.
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School Map
What is the makeup of a community? Who are its members and what activities do they carry out? Where is our school located? These questions guide research on the geographical
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Matter, Properties, and Building on a Budget
Combining NGSS science and engineering perspectives, students set off on an exploration of the properties of materials and their suitability for specific purposes. Students begin by investigating solids and liquids,
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Unlikely Friendships: An Exploration of Characters, Settings, and Following Rules
Students write and illustrate a class book about two unlikely friends and the importance of following rules. Students analyze settings, characters, and scenarios in order to design, create, illustrate, and
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Patterns in the Sky
To align with their NGSS Earth and Space unit, and the enduring cross-cutting concept of patterns, students create artists’ books to describe the patterns that we can observe in our
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Symbols In Motion – A Creative Movement Exploration of Patriotic Symbols
The double-learning goal for this project is for students to gain a deeper understanding of patriotic symbols, their meaning and relevance, while also developing key life skills such as cooperation,
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Theatrical Explorations of Water and Extreme Weather
Students create pantomime, tableau, and news reports to aid their investigations into the phenomena of bodies of water, water’s use and conservation, and extreme weather’s effects on the earth’s landscape,
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Creating Scenes Inspired by the Book Wonderstruck, by Brian Selznick
Inspired by Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck, students identified pivotal moments in the story, created an opening tableau leading into dialogue extracted from existing text and/or images, and then performed their scenes.
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A Poetic Approach to Weather
What role does weather play in our lives? How do changes in the weather impact the world we live in, and even alter our thoughts and feelings? For many students,
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Kinder Life Science Dances
Kinder students engage in a rich learning journey combining life science with collaboration, creativity and plenty of dancing. Incorporating a variety of creative movement activities, with poetry, lyric writing and
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Diversity and Fragility—Dances from the Living World
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are the focus for this embodied life science learning journey combining core ideas and science practices with a rich diversity of dance-making activities. Using dance
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Dramatizing Slow and Rapid Changes to Our World
How does erosion and weathering affect our earth’s surface? What events in nature can change our landforms quickly? These are the questions that inspire students to investigate the effects of
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Scripting Stories about Animals and Habitats
Can animals adapt and thrive in different habitats over time? Drawing from life science, second-grade students compare the diversity of life in different habitats, comparing and contrasting characteristics of living
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