It's time to put down those pencils and celebrate! Scholars share the visual representations of their position papers with the class. They participate in a gallery walk to view each other's work, writing a piece of praise for their...

Who knew you could paint with glue? After first adding liquid water color paints to bottles of white Elmer's glue and applying them to paper, students of all ages are then challenged to use their imagination and...

Bean shaker paintings and coffee grounds mosaics. Melted crayon drawings and raised glue art. Ten art projects for little ones are detailed in a 14-page packet.

Discover stories about women's history in beautiful stained glass windows. The second in a three-part series teaches scholars about a famous artistic style of stained glass windows and the influential women that used art to impact...

Eye contact, volume, pronunciation are all parts of a great presentation. Scholars create visual displays to clarify the claim for an upcoming presentation about whether the American Academy of Pediatrics should increase its screen time...

And then what happened? Class members engage in a series of activities that model for them how to read the story in a painting. Participants respond to questions that ask them to closely examine the elements in William Glackens'...

Is it a calendar? A religious symbol? A political statement? One thing for certain is that Aztec sun stone designs remain an important symbol in Mexican cultural art. Young artists craft their own Aztec Sun design incorporating ideas...

Teens and pre-teens are a prime target for advertisers, so how are they doing it? An interactive lesson highlights the strategies used by advertisers, such as visual imagery and verbal clues. Then, a short writing assignment puts those...

Time to wrap it all up! Using facts, details, and examples, pupils present their claims about whether the American Academy of Pediatrics should increase its screen time recommendations. They incorporate a multimedia visual display and...

Here’s a cross-curricular program music activity that uses Peer Gynt to engage class members. Groups take one section of “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” choreograph their section of the tune to represent the story as they imagine it,...

A still life with tissue paper? Why not! Using Paul Cézanne's art as inspiration, learners create their own still life pictures by gluing various colors of tissue paper onto a paper or pattern.

Introduce your young learners to opera by dressing up as Mozart and recounting some of the fascinating details of his life and music. After exploring the Metropolitan Opera's site for kids, the class listens to a reading of Kyra...

Just like scholars plug something in to close a circuit, they must plug a consonant onto a word to make closed syllables. Help learners distinguish between open and closed syllables with a series of activities that emphasize open...

Shell Silverstein’s “Sick” provides an opportunity for kids to demonstrate their understanding of syllables and phonemes. The class creates a list of descriptive words used in the poem that have more than one syllable, and brainstorm how...

"Ode to la Tortilla" and "Ode to Joy"? Sure! Use Gary Soto's poem to introduce learners to the ode format. After examining the descriptive words Soto uses, class members study a poster of Ludwig van Beethoven, suggest words that describe...

Turn your young artists into little Vincent van Goghs with a lesson plan on brush stroke style and color blending. Pupils practice the painting technique by sketching various shapes before recreating a van Gogh piece or creating an...

Really? Rapping The Odyssey? Really. A discussion of the oral tradition of story telling and its links to Epic poetry sets the stage for a series of activities that encourage improvisation to integrate music into other classrooms....

Bring the sounds of the deep South vocal blues to the classroom with a Smithsonian Folkways lesson. In preparation, scholars listen to and count the 12 bar blues patterns in several works and identify the I, II, IV, and V chords as well...

How can little dots in two colors make a third color? Experiment with pointillism and color mixing with a series of activities. After viewing paintings by Seurat and watching a teacher demonstration, pupils create samples of three...

Develop the fluency of beginning readers one sound at a time with this phonemic awareness lesson. Through a series of whole-class instruction, independent practice, and collaborative learning activities, children practice...

Scholars watch two puppet dialogues illustrating negative and positive communication between friends. Then, they discuss how the puppets' communication skills influenced the outcome of each interaction. 

Bring together a study of two major scientific topics with a lesson on the relationship between pollution and evolution. With the help of a PowerPoint presentation, hands-on activity. and class demonstration young scientists learn...

High schoolers study the ways in which an artist can use color. They view various images of artwork and discuss the effect of color on spacial dimensions, focal points, tone, and mood.

Want to teach your pupils about debate, effective speech techniques, propaganda, and the women's movement? The first in a sequential series of three, scholars analyze real propaganda images from the the historic women's movement, view a...