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Early Childhood

Article

Coolaboration

Friday, December 20, 2024 | Linda Schober

As educators, we teach skills that are valuable in the classroom as well as skills that can be carried into students’ everyday lives. Kindness and collaboration are crucial skills in all aspects ...

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Article

Ocean Animal Sculptures

Tuesday, September 10, 2024 | Mindi Rhoades

As students in separate pre-K classrooms throughout our center became interested in different animals, weekly studio time was used to support and extend their interests from an arts-based perspective. ...

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Article

Put-Together Patterns

Monday, April 15, 2024 | Sue Liedke

When a Sean Scully exhibition came to Philadelphia, I was excited to introduce my students to his bold, large-scale work. The paintings we looked at were massive—wall-sized panels featuring brig ...

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Davis Desk

Visibility

Tuesday, September 19, 2023 | Julian Davis Wade

An article I recently read offered this advice, “publicly displaying students’ art engages parents, arts education advocates, and the community in conversations about the importance of art ...

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Article

TAB for Tiny Humans

Thursday, February 9, 2023 | Lori Wallace

What does developmentally appropriate early childhood art education look like in the TAB art room? And how is it best supported by the TAB pedagogy? TAB is, at its heart, about building student agency ...

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Article

Froebel’s Gifts

Wednesday, December 14, 2022 | Ruth Byrne

Imagine drawing a single cube—a straightforward task for an art teacher. Now imagine drawing another cube so it looks like it’s on top of the first. This will activate your brain to search ...

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Article

A Cozy Collaboration

Thursday, November 10, 2022 | Sue Liedke

Made from fabric or paper, sewn or glued, a class quilt is a simple and effective way to complete a collaborative project. Each student participates in the design process, and with careful preparation ...

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Article

Growing Kindness Gardens

Monday, September 12, 2022 | Julia L. Hovanec

After the class engages with the picture book Kindness Makes Us Strong by Sophie Beer, students are introduced to the work of Jeff Hanson, who created striking, vibrant garden paintings and was known ...

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Article

Personal Pigeon Portraits

Wednesday, August 3, 2022 | Julia L. Hovanec

In this first-day-of-school lesson, students engage in a read-aloud of the picture book, The Pigeon HAS to Go to School! They also look at the expressive self-portraits of Frida Kahlo. Students then d ...

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Article

Warhol Flower Prints

Tuesday, May 10, 2022 | Liz Callahan

Printmaking with first grade—for some, that might sound like a scary idea. I’ve had a real passion for printmaking since college and have tried to pass that passion on to my students. I kn ...

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Article

Special Places

Monday, April 11, 2022 | Kristina Thomas and Carrie Nordlund

“I want to become an emotion scientist,” says Marc Brackett, founder of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. How can we support our learners to become scientists of feelings, and ex ...

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Article

Organized Chaos

Tuesday, March 8, 2022 | Sue Liedke

I was pleased to take students to see Sol LeWitt’s 2003 sculpture Splotch. Students examined the colorful towers from all sides and sketched it. I asked them for words to describe the work. &ldq ...

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Article

Projected Identities

Wednesday, February 9, 2022 | Sue Liedke

Through this layered photography project, students were encouraged to explore connections to historic American art and re-envision new roles for themselves as art viewers and artists. To introduce our ...

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Article

Kindergarten Marks

Monday, January 10, 2022 | Craig Hinshaw

With a purple crayon in hand and a four-year-old’s imagination, Harold creates an alternate reality that includes a frightening dragon, a picnic lunch with nine kinds of pie, and more. Harold en ...

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Article

Surrealist Playtime

Wednesday, December 8, 2021 | John Purcell

My students love surrealism. When I showed them the art of Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, their imaginations soared. They loved the silliness and the dreamlike bending of reality. It m ...

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Article

The Butterfly Project

Thursday, April 8, 2021

Historic flooding in the fall of 2015 led to widespread damage to low-lying areas of the Charleston, South Carolina area. One location with significant damage was Cypress Gardens, a beautiful and hist ...

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