Exploring Art Student Edition

Art is for all students! Our middle school art program: Introducing Art (thematic approach); Exploring Art (media approach); and Understanding Art (chronological/historical approach) provides a knowledge of art that will broaden students' horizons, help them understand and appreciate other cultures, and encourage them to think more creatively and solve problems more effectively.

A MEDIA APPROACH THAT BUILDS ART APPRECIATION EXPLORING ART takes a media approach to art, giving students insights into the ways artists are inspired, and the reasons they choose particular media to realize their artistic visions. Focusing on the elements and principles of art, students learn about various media and techniques, such as drawing, painting, printmaking and sculpting, as the chapters interweave compelling lessons on art, art history, aesthetics, and art criticism with opportunities for studio production.

Second in a series of three art education courses for middle school students. First course: Introducing art. Third course: Understanding art.

Glencoe Introducing Art invites students to see the ways in which artists from many cultures and eras have interpreted such subjects as nature, animals, people, places, objects, events, stories, celebrations, and fantasy. They'll learn about the elements and principles of art, as well as the media and techniques used to create art.

From FirehousePublications.com comes the elementary version of our bestselling book, The Art Student's Workbook. This elementary version was created by a 20+ year certified veteran teacher and curriculum writer for classes in drawing, painting and sculpture designed for grades three through eight. The lessons are broad and easily adjusted to accommodate different grade levels, special needs students, and material appropriate for many environments from the school classroom, or home based instruction, to a fine arts camp program. It includes nearly three years worth of lesson ideas in painting, drawing, sculpture, and clay, project samples, vocabulary, worksheets, sample tests, research paper samples, grading rubrics, sketch and note taking pages, and short creative five minute writing assignments, critiquing pages, and daily closure statements to meet district observational requirements. This book is also a helpful aid in fulfilling State and Federal accommodation requirements (504/ IEP) by providing special needs students additional documented and written material that may be taken home. Every lesson is designed to be personal and expressive fine art. There are NO "crafty" projects or "cookie-cutter" lessons where everyone has the same outcome. This book stresses a "divergent thinking processes" approach and creative problem solving, with an art therapy undertone. Most lesson suggestions may be done in different media to work within tight budgets. Anecdotal evidence from the author's guidance department indicates that students who take this course with this workbook are 50% less likely to fail standardized testing. These are real numbers that can grab the attention of your administration and Board of Education if you have the same results. These lessons combine information from core curriculum and merge it with fine art. Art is the meeting place for all subjects. When we grid-we use geometry. When we make sculptures-we use engineering. When we mix colors-we reveal information about physics. When we create illustrations for stories-we learn about literature. When we review the styles of art from da Vinci to Warhol-we teach history. Students not only come to understand the concepts, but use them, and manipulate them for deeper understanding on multiple sensory levels of thinking. This workbook is divided by multicurricula units so that this concrete connection to academic "core courses" is more easily seen. ALL projects are designed to have successful divergent results, incorporate creative problem solving, and bring relevant connections to students' lives. This book is built for student success on many levels from gifted to challenged. This in turn is helpful in fulfilling mandated accommodations so that no child is left behind. We recommend that you pair this book with the student edition of the same name. For those that teach in middle or high school, find our other title, "The Art Student's Workbook."

Themes and Foundations of Art sets the standard for introductory Art education. A unique blend of artwork from around the world, classroom-tested activities, and thematic teaching units will motivate and inspire your students as they engage in aesthetic inquiry, art criticism activities, art history experiences, and studio production. The themes of Nature and Art, Cities and Art, and The Human Image and Art will help students see connections between different artists, styles, time periods, cultures, and art media and methods. In addition to these three broad themes, other themes are explored throughout the text and supplementary materials.