San José Museum of Art
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Sowing Creativity

  • Sowing Creativity: Using Art to Teach Across the Disciplines

  • Four children in schol uniform watch in awe as an adult with a hat and camera presents photos using a projector.
     
  • Two children collaborate on a classroom art project, building a cityscape with paper, tape, and scissors.
     
  • Nine children in school uniform walk single file through an art gallery, observing exhibits, including a suspended rowboat sculpture.
     

    Sowing Creativity is a cross-curricular art program that infuses multidisciplinary content and extends our visual arts education into California Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards. Through stimulating multi-week art-making experiences in the classroom, professional artists lead students in challenging and engaging hands-on art activities.

    Lessons emphasize artistic exploration, skill-building exercises with drawing, painting, and sculpture, while encouraging participation in active discussions about visual art, math, science, language arts, and more. Each lesson plan integrates cross-curricular methodology while encouraging design thinking and creative problem solving.

    Now available online or in-person!

    Grades K–12 program structure: four-, six-, eight- or ten-week residency: each class experiences one 60- minute session per week; all art materials are included in the fee. Additionally, a tour of the Museum is included (virtual or in-person available).

    Sowing Creativity Program Includes: cross-curricular art lessons, art supplies, and Museum tour.

    Program Fee/Classroom: $560 4-week, $840 6-week, $1120 8-week, and $1400 10-week residencies.

    Minimum Participation Requirement: We are able to provide programming for a minimum of two classrooms or more at a school site. 

    Classroom Program Request Form

    Educational Frameworks and Content Standards

    Our award-winning Sowing Creativity program originated as a hands-on STEAM- based series of lessons and is rooted in several educational frameworks. Following Common Core Standards, the curriculum aligns itself with the Next Generation Science Standards and the California Arts Standards for Public Schools. The program has also adopted the Studio Habits of Mind framework for teaching and learning in the visual arts as developed by the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero.

    Support

    Sowing Creativity is made possible by lead support from the Leo M. Shortino Family Foundation; and by generous support from KPMG and Daphne and Stuart Wells. 

    Education programs at the San José Museum of Art are made possible by major support from the Leo M. Shortino Family Foundation; generous support from Lucia Cha, Priscilla Chou, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, Toby and Barry Fernald, Farrington Historical Foundation, Koret Foundation, KPMG, Rosemarie and Barry Mirkin, Technology Credit Union, and Daphne and Stuart Wells.