Grade Level

Area of Interest

Theme

Art Form

Media

Explore middle school art by creating cardboard pinball machines. Learn about physics, design, and kinetic art in this engaging lesson.

ClipCard: Cardboard Pinball Machines 

High-school students participate in a breathing exercise and create a painting that depicts emotions passing through the body.

ClipCard: Vacuum Breathing Warm-Up 

Young students collaborate to create large-scale shark sculptures and learn about the various parts of the shark.

Ocean Animal Sculptures

A middle-school art teacher routinely displays the work of every student via seasonal stained-glass-inspired window installations.

Stories in the Sky

Student artwork examples using Piktotape™. Get a box of PiktoTape™ and find lesson plans and more resources at DavisArt.com/PiktoTape.

Tape Art

Tape Art Showcase

I wanted to come up with a way to contextualize mindful strategies so students could practice self-regulation while talking through an uncomfortable feeling with a friend or listening to another person without jumping to conclusions. The solution was surprisingly simple. I would give students a collaborative assignment with no obvious solution, and we would mindfully work through the difficulties we encountered with painting and conversation.

The Mindful Art of Keeping Others in Mind

High-school students choose a letter from the American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet that they identify with in some way and then create contour-line drawings using the picture plane and grid method.

ClipCard: ASL Valued Hands

Middle-school students use papier-mâché to create a three-dimensional pumpkin.

ClipCard: Papier-Mache Pumpkins

Art teachers use a process-based approach to engage students in art-making. Young students apply color-mixing to create vibrant watercolor paintings, elementary students are introduced to the unique process of paper quilling, middle-school students use critical thinking and ideation skills while drawing meaningful self-portraits, high-school students use fused glass techniques to create functional works of art, and more.

The Process Issue of SchoolArts Magazine for May 2025 dives into comprehensive insights on processes in art education.

The Process Issue, May 2025

This issue focuses on various interpretations of contemporary art and what art means for students today. Young students connect to the natural world and print with leaves, elementary students combine elements from historical and contemporary artworks to create a new work of art, middle-school students explore the large-scale sculptures of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, high-school students channel contemporary themes into a self-portrait photo composite, and more.

Discover contemporary art schoolarts April 2025. Explore diverse art education practices, techniques, and insights in this compelling edition.

The Contemporary Art Issue, April 2025

This issue highlights several ways in which art teachers have integrated collaboration into their teaching practice, such as providing students with opportunities to problem-solve and work together throughout the year, learning about the Sustainable Development Goals and creating a tile installation symbolizing them, inviting a local florist to teach an art lesson, collaborating with an artist to create an outdoor installation, and more.

Collaboration in art education shines in SchoolArts January/February 2025. Discover strategies for impactful teaching and student engagement through collaborative art practices.

The Collaboration Issue, January/February 2025

Art teachers start the school year with lessons that engage students while teaching them foundational skills and techniques. High-school students create paintless paintings with tissue paper; middle-school students complete the second half of their self-portraits in the style of a chosen artist; elementary students use the elements and principles to draw realistic and abstract landscapes; young students learn about personal preferences while designing paper shoes; and more.

It's back-to-school with SchoolArts! Art teachers begin the school year with lessons that engage students while teaching foundational skills and techniques. 

The Beginnings Issue, September 2024

Art teachers support their students in recognizing and understanding the part that design plays in their everyday lives. Students express emotions through physical drawings of robots with digital symbolism, create visually impactful infographics inspired by real or imagined travels, develop real-world skills by collaborating with clients on design-related projects, and more.

The January/February 2024 Design Issue features articles on teaching design, environmental art, animation, and more. Explore now!

The Design Issue, January/February 2024

Capture students’ attention and engagement with lessons that lay the groundwork for a memorable school year! In this issue, students learn about art room procedures while participating in a scavenger hunt, identify key strengths and how they can use them, develop personal connections to drawing exercises through altered books, create abstract compositions during a virtual artist visit, and more.

The Groundwork Issue, September 2023, explores art education themes like mindfulness, collage, color challenges, and altered postcards. Discover more insights.

The Groundwork Issue, September 2023

Play and process-based art abound in the summer issue! Art teachers share lessons in which students can take risks and experiment with materials in a stress-free environment. Students create artful sound sticks to express emotions, assemble 3D hats inspired by art careers, collaborate or work solo to engineer mixed-media parade floats, draw colorful portraits with exaggerated expressions, and more. 

Discover play in SchoolArts Summer 2023. Learn about play, creativity, and art education trends. Start expanding your teaching toolkit today.

The Play Issue, Summer 2023

Art teachers share lessons that focus on media arts, digital processes, and new technologies. Students design and develop meaningful side-scrolling video games, learn light painting techniques to capture long-exposure photographs, turn 2D drawings into 3D-printed models, create a digital floral folk-art piece inspired by their heritage, and more.

Discover the Media Arts Issue, April 2023, featuring K-12 art innovations. Explore contemporary art and creative practices in this vibrant edition.

The Media Arts Issue, April 2023

Art teachers share lessons that focus on student choice and Teaching for Artistic Behavior. Students use an everyday material to express their ideas in 2D and 3D form, experiment with digital drawing apps to alter self-portrait images through collage, engage in discussions about race and identity during a color-mixing exploration, participate in hands-on learning stations to investigate symmetry, and more.

The Choice Arts Issue, March 2023

Art teachers encourage students to develop visual and digital literacy skills. Young students learn about Froebel’s Gifts and participate in a series of scaffolded lessons, elementary students explore the concept of unity in art-making and photograph compositional designs, middle-school students use surprising materials to construct hyperrealistic food items, and high-school students create imaginative Doodle Art inspired compositions.

The Visual Culture Issue, January/February 2023

Art teachers foster a collaborative environment through group projects. Young students use a sewing machine and join their individual fabric squares into a class quilt, elementary students participate in a school-wide effort to learn about biodiversity protection efforts, middle-school students connect to real-world scenarios and interdisciplinary problem-solving to collaboratively design games, and high-school students team up with a former art student to create a mural.

The Collaboration Issue, December 2022

Art teachers encourage students to tell stories through their art. Young students listen to a read-aloud and create clay creatures inspired by the book, elementary students illustrate influential figures in art history, middle-school students juxtapose natural and human-made elements through narrative compositions, high-school students manipulate images to create imagined landscapes, and more. 

The Story Issue, November 2022

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