Research

To begin in the art room, a common theme based on specific cultures must be decided upon for the year's curriculum.

For example, our 2000 art curriculum was based on ancient cultures. The locations studied were Egypt, Rome and the Lost Continent of Atlantis. The 1999 curriculum was based on American Folk Art specifying Colonial America and South American Folk Art. Our 2001 art curriculum is based upon a story about a Costa Rican boy coming to America and learning American history from the years 1900-2000.

This approach is very versatile and totally limitless.

Once the theme is decided, the year is broken into approximately 4 units. Each unit investigates a culture thoroughly, and a piece of art is produced from that research per child.

In order to facilitate this, the art teacher needs to put together as much information on a culture as possible with as many visuals as possible. We do ours by using the Internet and PowerPoint and create a unit per culture as a slide show.

The slide show is presented to the children when the unit is introduced.