One hundred and fifty years ago, on February 12, 1870, the Utah Territorial Legislature passed a women’s suffrage bill that allowed female citizens to vote under the same laws as the men. Join Better Days 2020, Utah Department of Heritage and Arts, and Utah Cultural Alliance at the Utah State Capitol to commemorate and celebrate this important anniversary and our Utah HERitage of women who continued to fight for representation and improve their communities.
Social and political change is often long and difficult and involves many different women and men working together – and sometimes against each other. The year 2020 marks the 150th anniversary of Utah women being the first in the nation to vote under an equal suffrage law. Learn MORE, A LOT MORE at Better Days 2020.
Sample activity using resources found on Better Days 2020 website.
Leaves From Roots is the brainchild of Britt Black, BTSALP Visual Art specialist at Philo T. Farnsworth Elementary School (Granite School District.) The exhibit celebrates the rich and diverse cultures that make up the community and student body of the school. This project comes with a lot of thought and meaning. Students have been working since the start of the 2019-2020 school year to create a leaf based on an investigation into their own roots.
These artists know that there was once a member of their family that brought them and their culture to Utah, whether it was quite recently or hundreds of years ago. Perhaps this family member was their great, great grandmother. Perhaps it was they themselves.
They researched this idea and created symbols and stories to display for their family traditions, celebrations, cultures, languages, motifs and flags on their leaf. All based on their research. The actual leaves which they cut out are shaped from these countries of origin. You will see in these young artists’ work that they joyfully and vibrantly show ways they celebrate through line and color. You will see pictures and symbols telling stories from their families and how their families worked hard to get here. You will see pictures and symbols marking the countries that ultimately influence their culture and pride
This is the beautiful, diverse, colorful community of Farnsworth Elementary School displayed in hundreds of leaves.
The University of Utah, College of Fine Arts, presented their ArtsLink 2019 conference on Saturday, March 2nd. ArtsLink is free to students and is a daylong introduction into the wonderful world of arts integration. Plus breakfast, lunch, swag bags, and lesson plans for all!
It was a fun day filled with art making and educational conversation. Breakout sessions, integrating the beautiful book, Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth, by Oliver Jeffers, were held in the four art forms of Dance, Drama, Music and Visual Arts.
Dance with Jana Shumway: “Here We Are”on the LAND THAT WE LOVE!
Curriculum Connections: At the end of this workshop, students understood more about our earth’s land. They danced the different biomes (desert, plain, tropic, tundra, grassland, mountain, forest, wetland.) They choreographed movement about the levels in the soil (topsoil, subsoil, bedrock;) and created shapes of many land forms, then moved like the forces (water, wind, gravity, ice) that case weathering and erosion. Quite a workout!
Drama with Penny Caywood: Notes for Living on Planet Earth
Curriculum Connections: Students in the Drama workshop connected the Drama standards of Creating, Performing and Responding with Literacy standards (Connect.) Students read, listened to and told stories from a variety of cultures, genres and styles. They identified characters, setting, plot, theme and conflict in the stories. They also identified historical, global, and social issues connecting them through drama/theater work. Sounds heavy duty but it was SO MUCH FUN!
Music with Susan Swidnicki: Come Dance and Sing Around the Ring
Curriculum Connections: The geography of a community influences the cultural development of the humans who inhabit the community. There are relationships between climate, natural resources and other geographic characteristics and a community’s cultural development.
Students explored the idea of interrelationships between community and environment. Susan explained ways people respect and pass on their traditions and customs. Students then identified physical features of a community and could explain how they affect people’s activities in that area – All Through Music!
Visual Arts with Jen Terry: Animal Maps
Curriculum Connections: Mapping builds higher order thinking skills and brings meaning-making to place, thing, concept and idea. This sense of scale, perspective, representation, symbol and observation connects deeper understandings to the experience and helps break apart place, thing, concept or idea into meaningful chunks of information to form an understanding of the whole
Students created a variety of maps – animals maps out of shapes, map of a fish, character maps and scientific drawings. So many ideas. So little time!
Welcome to Draper Elementary’s Art Night 2016. Enjoy the visual arts projects created by the students and their BTSALP specialist, Kylie Welling. Arts and academic integration at it’s finest. Click here to learn how visual art can support and enhance content area learning.
