How can you integrate Art into your classroom?

 

How can you integrate Art into you classroom?

Being one of those people would couldn't draw a picture of a rainbow to save my life, I have begun to learn just how fun art can be. I have six beautiful children, all of them different in their own ways, who excel at everything that they do, whether that be sports, grades, reading, math or just whatever they put their minds to. I never really occurred to me that there might be a common link that they all share. “Studies have shown that quality arts-integrated learning helps to 'level the playing field' in the classroom for students of varying intellectual and physical abilities, as well as social and cultural backgrounds, while providing an exciting learning environment for all.” www.neohiofamily.com/articles/index.php?view=viewarticle&id=256

After reading this article it was like a light bulb going off in my head! I am not saying that every school that my children have attended are deeply entrenched in the arts, but they do a lot of art work and teaching about various things to do with the arts. An article at eHow.com had a small article that had a sentence in it that would further link this idea for me. “Tap into student's multiple learning modalities and assign hands-on projects that allow students to express their creativity.” I had never thought that a gap could be bridged between learning something and art. Could my children become more adept to learning by allowing their creativity to be unleashed? Could there really be a link between the two? There was a paragraph in Chapter 9 of Emphasis Art that read: “Math and art are two complementary ways of knowing about the world. Especially during the Golden Age of Greece and during the Renaissance, math and art came together. Nowadays, computers, microscopes, and radio telescopes are bringing them into relationship again. You can help your students to appreciate these interrelationships through a variety of art and mathematics lessons based on measurement, shapes and proportions. Rather than a world or math as distinct from a world of art, you can provide the bridge and help your students to see their interconnectedness.”

So how does all of this work? I mean I like to think that I appreciate art as much as the next person. I have looked at many pieces of art work but, do I feel any smarter for having done so? Not really, but I am not surrounded by works of art everyday or do I draw a picture everyday. At http://www.teachhub.com/ there was an article about 12 ways to integrate art into your classroom and it talks about this very thing. “Introduce students to artistic works that match your curriculum. Mythology and famous stories throughout the centuries have inspired ballets, operas, symphonies, sculptures and paintings.” This was the way that I have not been getting, by immersing myself in art or artistic themes maybe I could get those creative and mental juices flowing. This is how we can, and must, introduce art into our classrooms. To let the children get their creative juices flowing and to be able to express themselves in artistic ways. We need to explore new ideas and ways to introduce the everyday and mundane things in life artistically.