Keep the Creativity

Amongst so much pressure from No Child Left Behind many schools and teachers have cut time students spend in art and music to give more to reading and math. The trick now is to integrate art education and general creativity back into the classroom through the foundations of other subjects. I think of myself as a highly creative thinker and I find projects that challenge my creative thought to be exciting and worthwhile no matter the subject. For example, I absolutely hated math as an elementary student (still do), I dreaded my homework and the daily lectures. Yet, I can still remember the projects I did enjoy: drawing a scenes with various geometric shapes, building the strongest bridge possible out of toothpicks and glue (then testing it's strength with weights), and even drawing out tessellation patterns. All of these projects combine math skills with creative thinking and visual art skills almost flawlessly. It's so easy to integrate just a few projects, I feel like teachers just need to look around.

Reading too can be easily incorporated to an artistically minded education. Presenting the literature as an art form helps. Looking at plays, poetry, screenplays and song lyrics all reinforce the creative aspects of writing and reading. Even having children draw out a pivotal scene from a recent story can help them see the words from a new perspective. Such practices can help improve comprehension and some word recognition.

Here is an interesting blog about elementary art I was browsing. I enjoyed the blog's extensive list of alternative art education blogs and websites.