This paper will report on an Eisenhower-funded professional development project
integrating mathematics and art at Timothy Elementary School during the
2002/2003 school year. The goal of the project is to help the teachers at
Timothy Elementary School deepen their knowledge of mathematics while exploring
ways of placing mathematics instruction in artistic contexts. We will show
artwork done by teachers and students and we will describe how the artwork has
been used in teaching mathematics.

The Eisenhower-funded professional development project at Timothy
Elementary School   is designed to help teachers use children's
artwork as a focus for mathematics instruction.
The first author, a mathematics professor, designed mathematics
activities that could use visual aids to help students understand and
clarify some of the fundamental mathematical concepts taught in
elementary school.  The second author, an art teacher, designed art
projects for these visual aids.

In a series of workshops, teachers learn about the art projects and
about the mathematics related to the art projects. The artistic
contexts have been chosen so that various levels and forms of the
related mathematical topics can arise.  This supports a particular
goal of the project, which is to help teachers deepen their
understanding of the ways mathematical ideas develop and build
through elementary school and beyond.  This is meant to help teachers
teach mathematics with an eye toward their students' future
mathematics learning.

In class, teachers use the art projects for mathematics instruction.
Some art projects are done in art class, others are done in the
regular classroom.  We will show examples of art projects and
describe how they were used for mathematics instruction.

Art projects have been developed for instruction in
addition/subtraction, multiplication/division, perimeter, area,
volume, and algebraic ideas, in addition to the more standard
artistic topic of symmetry.