The ARTS at RCOE offers standards-based lessons in Visual Art, Media Arts, Theatre, Music, and Dance. Designed to be simple, engaging, and readily accessible, these resources can be used by educators and families in both school and home settings.
Each lesson series focuses on a specific arts standard and builds learning from Pre-K through 5th grade, making it easy to engage students across multiple grade levels. New lessons and resources will continue to be added by art form as they become available.
Students with Diverse Learning Needs
Suggestions for Adapting Arts Lessons for Students with Diverse Learning Needs
Designed primarily for elementary and middle school students, these engaging art lessons are simple, accessible, and easy to implement. Ranging in length from 45 minutes to one hour, teachers and parents are invited to use these resources to support arts learning and creative practice.
Lessons created by artist and educator Louisa Higgins.
Thank you for checking out our new booklet, Arts Plus+, with eight integrated arts lessons.
As we embark on a new era in arts education for students, we recognize that arts integration is one strategy to bring arts into every classroom.
The Kennedy Center defines arts integration as “an approach to teaching in which students construct and demonstrate understanding through an art form. Students engage in a creative process which connects an art form and another subject and meets evolving objectives.”
Henri Matisse: Drawing with Scissors Lesson
We Are Water Protectors Lesson
Yayoi Kusama: From Here to Infinity Lesson
This series of six art and wellness lessons is designed to encourage creativity, reduce stress, and support a sense of well-being through artmaking.
Creative expression has long been used across cultures as a way to reflect, connect, tell stories, and support personal well-being. These accessible activities invite participants to slow down, explore their creativity, and experience the positive benefits of engaging in the arts.
We invite educators, students, and families to explore these lessons for use in the classroom or at home.
Lessons created by artist and educator Louisa Higgins.
These activity pages were put together in anticipation of a workshop for early childhood educators called "The Wonder of Fairies". They are meant to potentially support a thematic unit, which integrates the arts with literature and other content areas. Our culminating activity for the workshop was to create fairy houses, and that might be something to consider for your classroom. We also choreographed a "fairy dance" and did movement with "fairy music".
Including 7 activities to engage "littles" in the awe, wonder, and joy of fairies.
RCOE VAPA and Cabot's Pueblo Museum have joined forces to create four new arts lesson plans based on the museum's art collection and the life and work of Cabot Yerxa. These lessons are suitable for elementary and middle school students and utilize inexpensive art materials that can be found at your local big box or dollar store. We hope you'll consider doing these lessons either before or immediately following a visit to the Museum to allow students to learn with and through the arts.
Lesson Plan – Action Figure Sculpture
Foil Sculpture Examples
Lesson Plan – Navajo Inspired Blanket Drawing
Navajo Blanket Examples
Lesson Plan – Postcard Printmaking
Postcard Print Examples
Lesson Plan – Two Faced Portrait
Two Faced Portrait Examples
For more information about the Museum, including hours and admission prices, please visit the Cabot Museum website.
Cultural Tapestry Arts Lessons
The theory of Cultural Relevancy is highlighted in our current Arts Framework in the state of California. In support of this major educational pedagogy, the Arts at RCOE has created a series of arts lessons that highlights a variety of cultures via the art forms of dance, music, poetry, theater, media arts and visual arts.
These lessons are geared for secondary students (middle and high school). We hope that you will enjoy exploring them and sharing them with your students.
National Poetry Month Bookmarks
National Poetry Month, a celebration of poetry which takes place each April, was introduced in 1996 and is organized by the Academy of American Poets as a way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. The Academy of American Poets' website Poets.org serves as a hub for information about local poetry events during the month. The Arts at RCOE supports poetry and National Poetry Month by offering these free, downloadable poetry bookmarks to decorate and save. Each of them is perfect to print out on cardstock and then color in, to have a perfectly wonderful poem and bookmark to keep! Thank you to our Creative Design Team for creating these resources for students!
Friend and collaborator of the Arts at RCOE, Artist Tysen Knight has created an original design, coloring sheet that is free and available for download. The sheet features the Arts and RCOE as well as our “bird” that is branded on all of our work in the arts.
Tysen Knight is an International Artist, Muralist and Award-Winning Filmmaker. He is most popularly known for his pop and street art style. As a teenager, Tysen communicated his artwork through street art on walls and vacant buildings. From an early age, Knight got hands-on drawing cartoons and airbrushing them on jeans. He also created business logos. At the age of fifteen, Tysen won his first national art competition award. He received the NAACP: ACT-SO Achievement Program, Award of Merit, for his exceptional artistic skills.
Knight has worked with organizations such as Habitat for Humanity to build homes for the less fortunate. He has also been involved in activities like preparing meals alongside Midnight Mission for the homeless and started The Tysen Knight Scholarship Fund to help young kids pursue art at no cost. Tysen has partnered with RCOE (Riverside County Office of Education) to start a program in California and utilized his brand of street art to inspire and mentor at-risk youth. During this mentorship program, Knight engaged students with an interactive program and taught them how to express themselves artistically, which has in return seen the drop-out rate of students in these programs reduced.
Tysen’s documentary, The Art Of Hustle: Street Art Documentary, was a success that motivated him to become a regular gallery contributor, from being a street artist. The production of the documentary, The Art Of Hustle, began in October 2016. Knight directed the documentary to deliver the inspirational story about all the endeavors and dedication required to achieve goals and dreams and also shed a positive light on street art.
Tysen won the award for the category, Best Feature Film, at Oregon Documentary Film Festival, in 2018, for his documentary, The Art Of Hustle: Street Art Documentary. He also won the Best Director Award, in 2019, at Marina Del Rey Film Festival, for his second film, The Art Of Hustle: Homeless Street Artist Documentary.
Knight has won numerous awards and accolades, for his philanthropic work.
RCOE Arts and S.C.R.A.P. Gallery have joined forces to offer a collection of original Reader’s Theater pieces designed for elementary students. These engaging stories complement children’s literature and visual arts experiences and pair well with lessons found in Arts Plus.
We invite parents and teachers to try the Sandi's Circus lesson in Arts Plus with The Magical Circus Adventure in Reader's Theater.
Likewise, you could also pair The Thing About Bees lesson in Arts Plus with the Beatrice and the Bees in Reader's Theater.
This is all about integration and how we can help students to learn and enjoy reading, literature, artmaking and theater all at the same time!
Stay tuned for more stories in the near future.
Original Reader’s Theater pieces created in collaboration with artists Louisa Higgins and Karen Riley.
Teacher Created Arts Lesson Plans
To help share the wealth of knowledge and experience among teachers, we invited them to share their creativity and imagination in the classroom by submitting lesson plans in the areas of visual art, choral music, instrumental music, dance, theatre, and media arts.
We hope the approved lessons posted below not only support educators, but also bring greater access to the arts for all students.
The Arts at RCOE in conjunction with the S.C.R.A.P. Gallery in Cathedral City have partnered to create their first Art Deck.
The Art Deck is an introductory activity suitable for any gathering where you are talking about, training about, or working with the arts. Its basis is the four artistic processes and all of the various reasons why the arts are so important in student education. This is a fun and interactive opening activity that takes ten minutes to complete and gets everyone warmed up and talking.
Click here to download a free copy of the Art Deck for your own use.
Hand out the Art Decks.
Have participants go through and look at each card, one by one.
Then, have them notice the four categories: CREATING, PRESENTING, RESPONDING and CONNECTING.
(You could give a brief overview of what these represent in the arts standards as the four artistic processes.)
Have them pick their favorite card, one that has an idea that really resonates with them.
(@ 2-3 minutes)
Split the group up into the four categories.
You can have color coded signs in different parts of the room, one for each category.
(ex.: red=CREATING, yellow=PRESENTING, blue=RESPONDING, purple=CONNECTING)
Find your group and discuss amongst the group why that is your favorite category.
(@ 2-3 minutes)
Within that group/category, have each person share out about your favorite card.
Why did you choose it?
How does it resonate with you?
What implications do you find for your work and/or your life?
(@ 2-3 minutes)
All groups take turns sharing out with the larger group.
(@ 2-3 minutes)
We would like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Merryl Goldberg, at Cal State University, San Marcos, whose Arts=Opportunity cards were our inspiration for this project!
