Desert Landscapes with Real Sand

This year I am the luckiest teacher in the world. I get to teach at the best school ever – International School of Morocco, with some of the best, most creative, teachers ever. Each time I walk into someone else’s classroom, I get inspired and we just seem to spiral great teaching ideas off of each other. It’s a wonderful place to teach, and since we are all collaborating, it’s a wonderful place for our kids to learn – a teacher’s dream, right? I have tried and tried to convince the other teachers to create blogs of their own to spotlight and share some of their amazing ideas, but everyone is super busy. Instead, they have each agreed to let me spotlight some of their ideas right here on Raki’s Rad Resources. So, each Friday night, I will be posting an ISM Spotlight.

One of the things I love at ISM is that an effort is always made to integrate our science and social studies topics into our enrichments – art, music and drama.  Last year, the teachers taught the enrichment classes.  I taught art and we made African masks during our Africa unit and lamps during our Machines unit.  This year, we are lucky enough to have a full time enrichment teacher, Emma Sanders, who has done a lot of integration as well, including doing marble art during a forces unit and newspaper collages of important economic articles during our economy unit.  One of my kids’ favorite integrations – and the thing that showed up time and again on their online portfolio planning sheets as their “favorite part of art” was sand art.

Currently, our entire school is studying the desert.  Ms. Sanders did a project with the students where they drew desert landscapes in sand.  First, students poured sand on their paper and used their fingers to draw out what they wanted.  Then they took a picture of this to hold their “brainstorming” electronically.  Next, students took another piece of paper and used glue sticks to make their design.  They then sprinkled sand over the glue and voila – desert landscapes with real sand.

 

How does your school integrate the arts?