What makes our programs different?
Our team’s ability to envision, model, and inspire.
As educators we have a profound responsibility to young people in the 21st century. With prevailing issues as the context for our teaching, art becomes the foundation for building creative minds.
We teach children to observe, to recognize patterns, and to synthesize their ideas.
We make connectivity central to every Leaps of Imagination experience. Working directly with classroom teachers we teach kids to find relationships between art, nature, and grade-level curriculum.
Learning is a complex process. We love to see imaginations in gear as original ideas unfold.
Get acquainted with some of Leaps of Imagination’s recent programs:
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
“Working Across Communities”
Second and Fourth Grades
Cushing and Thomaston, ME
Leaps of Imagination invited students from adjacent towns to make shared works of art. Starting in their own classrooms, each child drew a portrait of a creature with oil pastels. Participants from both schools kept daily journals, which artists transported between communities. Children offered feedback to partners in the neighboring town. Ultimately, all of our young artists came together, combining their two insect “halves”into a dramatically different whole. Crossing boundaries, kids realized the profound impact a collaborative mindset can have on creative thinking.
ROOTED in the ENVIRONMENT
“Inspired by Andy Goldsworthy: ‘New Views’ Fourth+Fifth Grades and ’Animal Abodes’ Second+Third Grades” Vinalhaven School, Vinalhaven, ME
“Art is a way of life. Nature is art,” one fifth grader wrote.
Open space fuels children’s imaginations. It opens their minds to new ways of thinking. Learners from Vinalhaven bonded with nature while making art in the woods adjacent to school. In cohorts, children explored and combined elements for building. Whether young artists were drawing, constructing, or making prints, they forged vital connections between 2 and 3-dimensional art and the natural world.
“The Power of Small”
Second and Fourth Grades
Cushing Community School, Cushing, ME
“Leaps of Imagination taught me to open my mind to art and nature,” one student wrote. “We are all connected.”
Leaps of Imagination’s program on bugs let kids in on a secret. Even when you’re small you can be powerful. Students are invested in becoming stewards of their environment. Delving into a month-long investigation of insects, each child focused on one bug. Young artists transformed their drawings onto collagraph plates for printmaking. Patience and perseverance, coupled with a growing understanding of the power of insects, led to striking works of art.
“In a Jar”
Third Grade
South School, Rockland, ME
“Imagination is a mental image of what you want to happen.”~ Leaps of Imagination student
First exploring and then gathering, young artists, inspired by the picture book, In a Jar, filled their glass containers with natural elements. They were excited to try out the “ant crawl” method. Learning to draw from observation, they carefully followed the contour of one object from their collection. Next, young artists carved their image into a rubber block, linking their passion for nature to the art of printmaking.