Skip to content

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.

Project Filter

Bee the Change: A Campaign for Awareness

Students create a campaign to spread the word around the hot topic, the plight of the bees, and find innovative ways to change people’s perceptions about bees. Through this discovery, students come to realize bees’ impact on our daily life and through student written scripts, demonstrate learning and awareness of the vital importance of bees.

View project

Contact between the Aztecs and Cortes: A First-Person Exploration

The Aztec civilization is brought to life through the eyes of six members of Aztec society—emperor, priest, slave, teacher, artist, and warrior—and their individual responses to the arrival of Hernan Cortes. Through first-person narratives, drawings, and theatrical dramatization, students demonstrate their understanding of Aztec customs, activities, and expectations about the arrival of Cortes.

View project

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” techniques include sun prints, crayon resists, freehand drawings, collage, crayon rubbings, and clay imprints. Students record and share their scientific findings after each activity. Discussions […]

View project

Ratios: Math + Art

“Math is a language through which we tell specific stories about the world.” Students use paper-craft techniques and interactive sculpture to explore ratios. They use a variety of combinations of paper strips to create equivalent ratios and solve a variety of mathematic equations.

View project

Exploring Life Cycles

Second-grade students use visual and performing arts to enhance understanding of a variety of life cycles: butterfly, frog, and plant. Techniques used include prop making, performance, singing, poetry, and songwriting. Students enhance their tangible artwork by adding creative movement in time for final performances.

View project

Wacky Body Machines

Physical science studies provide the foundation for creative activities with second-grade students. Creative movement enhances lessons on actions, motions, force, and push and pull. Students build “wacky machines” that combine illustrations and collaborative movement activities. To plan, organize, and record their movements, students use charts and corresponding descriptions of each movement. For their final assessment, […]

View project

Arctic and Antarctic: Fact or Fiction

What are the two poles of our planet, and how does the environment differ in those two places? Do the same animals live in the Arctic and in Antarctica? Students in several Flying Hills kindergarten classes learn to compare and contrast the Arctic and Antarctica by way of detailed, nonfiction visual arts books. Created over […]

View project

Animal Poetry Collages

First graders explore the subjects of their South African animal research by creating animal poetry collages that exemplify their understanding of content and their developing figurative language skills. Addressing ELA research and writing standards, students write a series of poems from the perspective of and/or based upon assigned South African animals. Then, students compile their […]

View project

Tales of Three

Kindergarten students write, design, illustrate, and present short works of narrative fiction modeled after traditional folk tales. Over the course of eight weeks, students utilize a variety of visual arts techniques to help deepen their understanding of elements of story such as character, setting, problem/solution, and resolution. Conversely, students discover more art concepts through their […]

View project

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 cause-and-effect relationships inherent in the rock cycle and perform experiments to grow crystals in the classroom. They create journals to categorize information, record observations, and make […]

View project

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 variety of plant materials (flowers, leaves, seedlings, etc.) and specimens of pollinators form the Natural History Museum, students create botany journals to document their […]

View project

Scientific Observation through Literature

Learning by direct observation and investigation, students create science journals. The journals are extended and revised to connect to the fable ”The Tortoise and the Hare.” Students’ individual storybooks are an artistic representation of nature and of the stories it teaches us.

View project