Welcome to the 3rd post in my series On Teaching Art.
The first post and the background behind this series is On Teaching Art: Art vs. Craft.
The second post was On Teaching Art #2: Organizing Curriculum.
The question posed for this installment is:
How can art be integrated into math, science, social science, and literacy?
That is a great question and I very often connect art lessons with their units of study in the classrooms. Integrating art with other subjects creates deeper connections to the content area and can spark student interest. It also can provide a way to organize your art curriculum.
Many of the lessons I teach coordinate with the units of study in the other classes.
Science and Art
Our Science teachers are very good about incorporating art into their classroom. The elementary science teachers do a lot of observational drawing and diagrams of the things they are studying. There are a lot of scientific studies that lend themselves nicely to inspiration in the art room.
- Cloud Types
- Frogs
- Insect Habitats
- Trees
- Birds
- More Trees— Pointillism and the science of optical mixing
- Recycling
- Microorganisms
- Shells
- Physical Properties– describing attributes
- Leaf Paintings, Clay Leaf Bowls, Leaf Printmaking
Literacy and Art
There are so many ways to tie together literacy and art! My favorite way is to read aloud children’s books that relate to what we are studying. There are many great stories about master artists. When I write blog posts about art lessons, I often include the name of a book that I read to the class. One of my favorite series is the Mike Venezia Getting to Know the Artists books. Another way to incorporate books is to create an art lesson based on a story. Here are a few:
- Dr. Suess books
- The Dot
- Beautiful Oops
- The Invention of Hugo Cabret (I didn’t read this one aloud, but showed the pictures. I encouraged the kids to check this author out on their own.)
- The Orange Book
- Elmer
- Tar Beach
- Roberto the Insect Architect
- Everything I Know about Pirates
- Everything I Know about Monsters
- Everything I Know about Cars
Social Studies and Art
As I wrote in my earlier post about developing curriculum, connecting with Social Studies is perfect. Art and cultural studies go hand-in-hand. I have so many lessons on this blog based on other cultures. Go to the “Art History” section on the Art is Basic toolbar and you can browse through lessons based on cultures. Three books that I recommend to help you are Art from Many Hands, Multicultural Art Activities Kit and Brown Bag Ideas from Many Cultures. These are three that I referred to often when I first started teaching.
Here are a few links to lessons I have taught related to:
- Africa
- Alaska
- America
- Australia
- China
- Egypt
- Greece
- Japan
- Mexico
- Native American
- Ancient city of Sumer
Math and Art
I am always hunting for ways to tie math and art together. Math is connected to art through the use of shapes, rulers, perspective, symmetry and patterns. I would love to see more art projects using math. You can see some cool ideas on my Math and Art Pinterest board.
Dear Marcia,
I was negligent in replying and thanking you for these three excellent posts. THANK YOU FOR THESE THREE EXCELLENT POSTS!
Our semester is over for the summer, and I’m planning for the fall. You can bet I’ll include these three posts and links in my curriculum for my methods course.
I’ve created a concept attainment lesson with photos from your blog (as examples of children’s art) and photos from other places online (as examples of craft–bulletin boards of birds that all look alike, adult-made samples of things) so students can build a concept of what art for children is and what it isn’t. Is it OK for me to use your blog photos in my class? I can email you the slide show, too.
Tentatively, I am planning on assigning them each to write one art lesson and make the art themselves to show in our class. There is a sculpture studio right across the hall from our teacher ed classroom. Maybe we can take a field trip across the hall. If they can do so in their placement, I’d like for them to teach their lesson too.
Most of this 4-unit course is on math, science, social studies, and classroom management, so I appreciate your comments on integrating art into the other content areas and actually using social studies as a starting place to plan art curriculum for the year. Maybe their art lesson can be part of their social studies unit… And managing art materials (handing out, using appropriately, cleaning up) would be a great classroom management experience.
Maybe I can integrate integrating art into my own teaching!
Thank you again so much. I’ll keep an eye on your new posts as I set out in our new school year. And if you ever come to Los Angeles, I’d love for my students to meet you.
Sincerely,
Carrie Birmingham
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I know this post focuses primarily on elementary grades, but it is applicable through high school and beyond. I am a high school math teacher of pre-calculus and statistics. I try to incorporate standards and “snippets” from other disciplines into my classes. For example, in pre-calculus, we study “conics,” which are circles, ellipses, hyperbolas and parabolas. I had students create art projects using only lines and conic sections. For the math standards, students had to find equations for each line and conic they used. For art, I had our high school art teacher come in and discuss design and artistic standards. Another example of this integration is from my AP Statistics class where students created games of chance. Again, the art teacher provided me with standards, websites and videos to help with logos, packaging and design of games.
Excellent! So glad to hear you are connecting with the art department in your math classes! 🙂
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