How Can You Integrate Art Into Your Classroom?
The answer to this question for me is that art can be integrated in nearly limitless ways. I feel that using art in conjunction with learning cements the subject matter in the minds of the students. Even though art instruction is valuable to all students, I believe it is especially beneficial for students that struggle with learning, because they can absorb the mental images much easier than verbal or textual learning. First, what is art integration and why is it important? According to an article from artseveryday.org, art integration infuses “content and skills from the arts-dance, music, theater, and visual arts-with core subjects.” Visual arts integration creates personal connections and added depth in classrooms using creative teaching and learning.

The Three Domains
So, how do we do integrate art and in what areas should we focus? The three domains of art integration are Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor. Cognitive refers to using art to derive significance and meaning Affective refers to using emotions to help us learn and make our learning relevant to real life. We can gain meaning and acceptance using art. Psychomotor refers to doing thing hands on through body movement and the employment of our senses.

The Visual Culture Approach
The Visual Culture approach ties the reality of the world we live in and our cultural experience with media, communication, and information resources as well as fine art, sculpture, music, and architecture.

Examples of Art Integration from the Text
The text gives some excellent examples of integrating art with core subjects like social studies, reading and language arts, mathematics, and science. In relation to reading and writing, art is a great asset. Drawing emerges long before written symbols in a child’s attempt at communication. Picture only storytelling goes back to our core existence as cave paintings were used to depict life and express emotion. Pictures can act as a prompt for writing stories or serve as a visual account of events. Written accounts can also influence drawings. Art terms expand vocabulary and open up avenues of expressiveness. Some examples of art integration in the following core curriculum studies are:
Social Studies-Draw ceremonies or celebrations, examine pictures showing cultural differences, self portraits, study portraits of artists to see what they tell you, draw careers of family or neighbors, write about a favorite toy, draw places they have visited, draw themselves in another cultures attire or place themselves in historical scenes, draw maps from home to favorite places, make contrasting drawings of cultures from two different points on the globe, draw pictures of appropriate behavior in certain places (playground, classroom, etc.), Make posters of community issues, design advertisements for made up products, or draw and tell about a career choice.
Reading and Language Arts- Illustrate a story, keep a journal that includes drawing and writing elements, write a poem or essay based on a painting or picture, draw and write about a memory.
Mathematics- Show students pictures, of flowers for example, and ask them to estimate how many flowers there are in it, draw a one inch grid on a picture and increase the scale to a four inch grid, draw one half of a figure on a paper and while paint is still wet fold in on itself to create the other half, bisect shapes to see what other shapes they make, use shapes to make tessellation patterns,
Science- Draw animals, make nests, or cast animal tracks, draw or cut out a variety of wildlife and classify them, draw objects in the night sky creating new constellations, draw a food pyramid and cut out food they eat to go on it, sketch unusual geological features or rock formations, make anatomical drawings adding organs and/or muscles, paint rainbows, use mirrors and drawings to study ideas of convex and concave, draw close up textures from plants and flowers or types of clouds.
These are all good examples of integration that will only benefit students. Arts integration can and should be a part of every students learning process. In an article by Natalie Kidd on the Education. com website, she states that “arts integrated education improves academic achievement across the entire spectrum” especially in reading writing, and language development. She cites that it also improves “social skills, motivation, and student engagement.”

My Ideas for Integration
Some of my ideas for art integration in the following core curriculum studies are:
Social Studies: The text presents social studies as the most art friendly subject in the curriculum. I think creative role play would be a fun way to integrate art in this subject. In a unit on Egypt for example, students could spend the week making ornamental items, like headdresses, masks, jewelry, then make a clay tablet with their names written with Egyptian symbols, and on the last day they could role play the different stations of Egyptian society (Pharaoh, scribe, slave) to gain an understanding of how they truly lived. Making a wanted poster of a historical figure would also be a fun way to discover and record facts about that figure.
Reading and Language arts: There are a lot of fun ways to integrate art into reading. They can create journals where they draw a picture and write a story based on it or find a picture in and art magazine and write a’ what happened before’ or ‘what will happen next’ scenario to go along with it. Students could recreate each letter of the alphabet using shapes (like circles or squares) or pictures (finding something in the environment that looks like a letter: a telephone pole looks like a T). According to the text, art is also important in teaching lines, shapes, texture, and patterns. The text also says that art has a lot of fun vocabulary like straight, curvy, jagged, thin, bold, wavy. The students could make tags with these words, stick them to their foreheads, and act out the word through body movement.
Mathematics: Have students add or subtract cutouts of things. For example butterflies… what do you get if you add two butterflies and three butterflies? What if four of them fly away? You could ask students to see how many one inch squares it takes to make a six or ten inch square. How about making a pizza? Students could cutout geometric and organic shapes that mimic pizza toppings and then estimate (then demonstrate) how many it would take to “top” a ten or twelve inch Pizza (circle).
Science- the world is filled with amazing texture. Science is a great subject to highlight this! You could make sculptures of things like atoms or DNA helix, make casts or rubbings of plants, leaves, bark, etc. and make shadow box models of animal habitats of regional environments (desert, wetland, etc.).

I am a firm believer of art integration as I have seen how it can help students grasp concepts. Something I noticed while subbing at Head Start was how much committing an idea to a familiar tune helps with concept retention and how much having the freedom to move about and actually touch and smell things helped with concept learning. I like relating the colors to temperature. They then see the color as well as feel it. Having children draw pictures and then sit in an author chair and tell about it is also mighty powerful. They are able to doubly express how they feel about the subject and teachers and other students are able to learn a lot about them in this manner. I also thought it was a great way to open up lines of communication. It shows commonality of interests and gives students a social opening. If a student draws her family or favorite animal, other students can see just how alike they might be. It also works in the opposite way. Head Start is also a environment where you have a variety of students including ELL students. Visual representations are also a good way to show similarities and differences of customs, culture as well as a way for students who are trying to grasp the English language to get an idea of what you are talking about even if they do not understand all of the vocabulary. In an article titled “Strategies for Art Integration” on scholastic.com, it states that art integration is crucial because it is “experiential learning” or the direct learning by experiencing a subject. It goes on to say that it opens up a child to creativity, critical thinking, and innovation. So, why not use arts integration? Natalie Kidd’s article on education.com says that a lot of schools cite time and money as an issue for arts integration. They lack the time or funds to train teachers or to purchase supplies. Thankfully a lot of art can be implemented using minimal supplies or recycled goods and taking a great class like this one, we will already be trained and ready to fully and hopefully seamlessly integrate art into our own classrooms. I feel like every subject in the curriculum should be enhanced with art. It is an excellent way help the students become more well rounded and creative. Is art integration valuable? It is absolutely invaluable!!

Works Cited
Clements, Roger D. Emphasis Art. 2010. Ninth edition. Allyn and Bacon. New York.
Kidd, Nancy. Could Arts Integrated Education Help Your Child Succeed? http://www.education.com/print/Arts_integrated_Education/
Strategies for Arts integration. http://www.scholastic.com/browse/collection.jsp?id=457&print=1
Why Arts Integration? http://www.artseveryday.org/WhatWeDo/detail.asspx?id=166