From sculptures to animation, get crafty with these 36 fresh and fun ideas.
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Art & Literacy
Power up primary fluency with these art-infused classics!
Where the Wild Things Are.
Read the book and challenge kids to become "wild things" for a Readers Theater performance. For Max’s scepter, use an empty cardboard tube and mold an aluminum-foil ball. Make clawed feet and hands from spray-painted rubber dish gloves, and design a forest of construction-paper trees. Then "let the wild rumpus start"!
Read the book and challenge kids to become "wild things" for a Readers Theater performance. For Max’s scepter, use an empty cardboard tube and mold an aluminum-foil ball. Make clawed feet and hands from spray-painted rubber dish gloves, and design a forest of construction-paper trees. Then "let the wild rumpus start"!
Harold and the Purple Crayon
Post big sheets of butcher-block paper along the walls of your classroom and give each child a purple crayon. As you tell the story of Harold, have students deepen their listening and artistic skills as they take turns drawing the story.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Have each child color and cut out a big green circle. Travel through the school on a hunt for vocabulary words, writing each on a circle. Then all the kids stand together in a row to make a word-hungry caterpillar! When the caterpillar is "full," arrange the circles on the wall to make the wings of a word butterfly.
What Did You Put in Your Pocket?
Have each child design a giant pocket by stapling together two sheets of thick paper. Next, have kids write, draw, and cut out zany alliterative items to put into their pockets that rival Beatrice Schenk de Regnier’s "finny, funny fingers" and "spinky, spanky handkerchief."
Go Away, Big Green Monster!
Ed Emberley’s picture book breaks art into manageable chunks by showing a monster as a composite of squiggly purple hair, big yellow eyes, and so on. Have students design their own "shape monsters."
Challenge pairs to make their own "I Spy" assemblage, based on the popular Scholastic books by Walter Wick, and to write rhyming hints to accompany it. For example, at right: "I spy a rubber duck, a little cork, the letter G, a plastic fork. I spy an eye, a telephone, a butterfly, a chicken bone. A star, six different balls, the number five, four things that crawl." Bonus: Find these Scrabble points to reveal a hidden message: 4-1-3-1-3.
Say It With Clay
Using air-dry modeling clay, have kids form large numerals by rolling the clay into "snakes" and then shaping them with their hands. Then have them press small decorative shapes into the clay—for example, seven beads for the number 7.
Apple-Seed Addition
Give each student an apple to eat, then have them count the seeds in their apples. Use the seeds to illustrate a word problem, such as "2 seeds plus 5 seeds equals 7 seeds." Display the completed word problems in a paper apple tree on a bulletin board.
Post big sheets of butcher-block paper along the walls of your classroom and give each child a purple crayon. As you tell the story of Harold, have students deepen their listening and artistic skills as they take turns drawing the story.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Have each child color and cut out a big green circle. Travel through the school on a hunt for vocabulary words, writing each on a circle. Then all the kids stand together in a row to make a word-hungry caterpillar! When the caterpillar is "full," arrange the circles on the wall to make the wings of a word butterfly.
What Did You Put in Your Pocket?
Have each child design a giant pocket by stapling together two sheets of thick paper. Next, have kids write, draw, and cut out zany alliterative items to put into their pockets that rival Beatrice Schenk de Regnier’s "finny, funny fingers" and "spinky, spanky handkerchief."
Go Away, Big Green Monster!
Ed Emberley’s picture book breaks art into manageable chunks by showing a monster as a composite of squiggly purple hair, big yellow eyes, and so on. Have students design their own "shape monsters."
Art & Math
Redesign your basic math lessons.
I Spy Math SkillsRedesign your basic math lessons.
Challenge pairs to make their own "I Spy" assemblage, based on the popular Scholastic books by Walter Wick, and to write rhyming hints to accompany it. For example, at right: "I spy a rubber duck, a little cork, the letter G, a plastic fork. I spy an eye, a telephone, a butterfly, a chicken bone. A star, six different balls, the number five, four things that crawl." Bonus: Find these Scrabble points to reveal a hidden message: 4-1-3-1-3.
Say It With Clay
Using air-dry modeling clay, have kids form large numerals by rolling the clay into "snakes" and then shaping them with their hands. Then have them press small decorative shapes into the clay—for example, seven beads for the number 7.
Apple-Seed Addition
Give each student an apple to eat, then have them count the seeds in their apples. Use the seeds to illustrate a word problem, such as "2 seeds plus 5 seeds equals 7 seeds." Display the completed word problems in a paper apple tree on a bulletin board.
Art 2.0
These online art tools are educational and cool, and they’re encouraging collaboration between students all over the world.
Wordle
Create a pictorial “word cloud” by typing in a chunk of text (such as a student’s poem or short story), vocabulary words your class is currently learning, or the URL of your classroom blog, then display the results to build vocabulary in a
print-rich classroom.
Remix
Choose a background, add shapes, and play with opacity in this interactive collage. Layer and repeat! Red Studio also offers other tools, activities, and boards.
Rotoball
Rotoball is an interactive, international animation experience. Participants are invited to create an animation that lasts exactly 15 seconds. Each animation must contain a ball entering from the left and exiting on the right to be “passed” to the next animator. Assign student teams the challenge of creating their own.
Google Sketchup
SketchUp allows students to explore, explain, and present their ideas using 3-D models. Have students try it to redesign your own school building!
Mr. Picasso Head
Students can choose head shapes, eyes, mouths, and noses and then play with faces using this virtual Mr. Potato Head, inspired by the work of Pablo Picasso.
Scratch
Scratch is a new programming environment that kids can use to create and share their own animated stories, video games, and interactive art.
Music & Dance
Help kids retain concepts by getting them on their feet!
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Water Songs
Teach your students that shorter instruments (such as a piccolo) produce a higher pitch, or frequency, because the air vibrates more quickly in a small space. Longer instruments (such as a tuba) produce a lower pitch because the air vibrates more slowly in a large space. Let them observe the phenomenon by tapping on color-coded bottles filled with different amounts of water.
Dip, Dance, and Drip: Jackson Pollock
Break out of the classroom with action painting in the schoolyard. Garb your group in old clothes and provide buckets of paint in four different colors, plastic cups, a stopwatch, and cleaning supplies. Don’t forget the music! Place a drop cloth and large sheet on the ground. Each painter dips a cup into one color bucket and then dances to the music and drips paint over the "canvas." Call "stop" at the two-minute mark and survey the masterpiece! Go online for a virtual version.
Hokey Pokey
Use the classic "Hokey Pokey" song to review concepts. Are you studying parts of the body? You might sing: "Put your femur in. Put your femur out…." For odd and even numbers, give each student two cards with an even number on the front and an odd number on the back. Sing: "Put your odd numbers in. Put your odd numbers out…."
Sound it Out
Share some art masterpieces with your students and invite each to choose a "soundtrack" for one work of art. What soundtrack would Mona Lisa have? How about The Scream? Students can play a CD or an instrument for the class.
Teach your students that shorter instruments (such as a piccolo) produce a higher pitch, or frequency, because the air vibrates more quickly in a small space. Longer instruments (such as a tuba) produce a lower pitch because the air vibrates more slowly in a large space. Let them observe the phenomenon by tapping on color-coded bottles filled with different amounts of water.
Dip, Dance, and Drip: Jackson Pollock
Break out of the classroom with action painting in the schoolyard. Garb your group in old clothes and provide buckets of paint in four different colors, plastic cups, a stopwatch, and cleaning supplies. Don’t forget the music! Place a drop cloth and large sheet on the ground. Each painter dips a cup into one color bucket and then dances to the music and drips paint over the "canvas." Call "stop" at the two-minute mark and survey the masterpiece! Go online for a virtual version.
Hokey Pokey
Use the classic "Hokey Pokey" song to review concepts. Are you studying parts of the body? You might sing: "Put your femur in. Put your femur out…." For odd and even numbers, give each student two cards with an even number on the front and an odd number on the back. Sing: "Put your odd numbers in. Put your odd numbers out…."
Sound it Out
Share some art masterpieces with your students and invite each to choose a "soundtrack" for one work of art. What soundtrack would Mona Lisa have? How about The Scream? Students can play a CD or an instrument for the class.
Kids can rock out with musical instruments they make from recycled materials.
Maracas: Fill small containers with a scoop of dried beans, seeds, or rolled up pieces of aluminum foil. Shake!
Tambourine: Recycle aluminum pie plates, fill with a handful of dried beans (or old bottle tops), then staple closed around edges. Clap!
Drums: Use oatmeal canisters or tin cans. Join with rubber bands to make a set. Bang!
- Subjects:Arts and Crafts, Arts and Creativity, Visual Arts
