Coloring sheets that depict the parts of a flower or the stages of a frog can teach students science through art. The students can color and label the parts or stages as one method of learning the material. You can find these pages on various Internet sites and through material provided by the curriculum companies. You also can use coloring pages to teach math or social studies. The students can use stickers to create a graph that depicts population in a classroom or the number of houses on a block. They might color in the number of fruit pieces that answer a math problem.
You could use the life and works of an artist to explain how art affected history. For example, the art of Leonardo da Vinci also included many scientific diagrams and inventions that would not be understood or utilized until hundreds of years after his death. The students might compare some of those drawing and match them to current-day machines such as a helicopter or a calculator. The students might discuss how differently the artist might have been treated if he lived in a more modern time when his inventive capacities could have been used.
You can use a variety of art works to build the descriptive language of students. The students can look at a painting or statue and write a short descriptive essay about the art. You could talk about colors and textures, form and line. You can allow the students to experiment with paint and brush or chalk and colored pencils to mimic the art form. You might also have students describe how the art makes them feel. They can explore the descriptive language of feelings. They can describe how they feel in working with their own artistic talents.
You can use pictures of hieroglyphics, cave paintings and ancient works of art to explain that mankind has always communicated through art. You could allow the students to make cave paintings of their own or create their own hieroglyphic language to communicate. You can display ancient illustrated manuscripts as more examples of the use of art to communicate. Encourage the students to illustrate some of their own writing samples. You could assign a descriptive essay done only in picture words.