Last year I did a post listing Valentine activities for classrooms. Lots of them are good for families, too, so be sure to take a look. But here are 5 more heart-centered activities for the month that will help you create, investigate, and have fun–plus one more I just couldn’t resist. Most of these would … Continue reading
In my part of the world, we are in the middle of a season full of lights, music, festivities and gift giving. It is also a time when many people think about sharing with those in need. Clearly, some of us do this with exceptional creativity! Canstruction is an organization that collects food for the … Continue reading
In much of the world, December is a time of lights. December holidays are times for candles and sparkle—not surprising during a month that, for the northern hemisphere, is the darkest time of the year. So, for December, our family fun is all about light. 1. Make a light table from a plastic box. It … Continue reading
What images of our human earth would you hope might last longer than humanity itself? That is the question artist Trevor Paglen asked himself in compiling a collection of 100 “Last Pictures” of earth, recorded on an ultra-archival disc and encased in a gold-plated shell. Paglen spent five years interviewing scientists, artists, anthropologists, and philosophers … Continue reading
What happens when you mix Carl Sagan, profound ideas from science, illustration, and video/music remix techniques? Magical things. Recently I came across a video, created as a thesis project at Sheridan College. In it, student Adam Winnik used animation to bring part of Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot to video life. It made me wonder how … Continue reading
The Artful Thinking website, from Harvard’s Project Zero, is a fine resource for teaching art—and just about anything else. The program uses the image of an artist’s palette to outline six dispositions, or ways of thinking, that can be mixed to create masterpieces of teaching and learning. The dispositions include: Reasoning Exploring Viewpoints Questioning … Continue reading
One of my favorite events of the year is the annual Art Fairs (actually 4-fairs-in-one) that take over downtown Ann Arbor during the third week of July. It is invariably hot, sticky, crowded, and glorious. There is art you would expect (paintings, sculpture, glass, fiber) and much you might not—bowling ball jewelry, sculptures made of … Continue reading
You never know where a book will take you. In this case, the book Little Paper Planes has taken me on a host of high-flying adventures. The book itself is a treasure of creativity. In it, twenty artists present their interpretations of paper planes, from fairly conventional gliders to a shark plane, a balloon plane, … Continue reading
Recently, The New York Times has been publishing the results of its Found Poetry contest for students. This is a grand opportunity to introduce students to the poetic form of found poetry and to share exceptional examples of work done by high school students. Found poetry takes words and phrases from existing texts, rearranges them … Continue reading
My visit to Chinese schools has left me with amazing memories and a sense of scale that has changed forever my sense of “big.” The train stations were enormous. The cities were enormous. The schools were enormous, well organized, and full of bright-eyed students eager to try out their English on visitors. I loved the … Continue reading
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