When kids at 'Aikahi Elementary School study math, they also get a lesson in art. When they learn history, art is included. English? Social Studies? It's art, too.

In fact, the school has integrated arts education into nearly every phase of its core curriculum, putting itself on the leading edge of an idea that the state Department of Education has been promoting for several years.

The achievement of schools like 'Aikahi in expanding arts education is even more impressive because it comes at a time when many others still are struggling to improve their basic test scores and deal with the continuing challenges raised by the federal No Child Left Behind law, education officials say.

Even so, DOE officials say arts should be a big part of every classroom and can contribute to academic success in other areas, such as math and language arts.

"The goal is to develop the whole child," said Alison Ibara-Kawabe, a DOE art education specialist. "Art should be part of the everyday learning experience."

The department, working with the Hawai'i Arts Alliance, has developed an arts tool kit that helps kindergarten through fifth-grade teachers come up with lesson plans that use art to better teach basic subjects. The process, supporters say, makes teaching better and more enjoyable, helping students to learn.

"There isn't any student who doesn't respond to it favorably in some way," said James McCarthy, a roving drama coach and teaching partner who works in public elementary schools. "Even the shyest or most difficult ones open up because we're offering them a new learning style."

At 'Aikahi, which recently won a national award from a private arts company that specializes in school projects, the results are tangible.

At a recent two-day exhibition, each of the school's more than 600 students had at least one piece of artwork on display. The work included sculpture, painting and mixed genres — all the result of lessons that started out in different disciplines.

Some kindergarten students, building on their first science lesson, drew pictures of how plants look both above and below ground. First-graders, inspired by the books they were reading, made dragons from one piece of clay, a project that helps them move from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional world and develops hand coordination skills. Fourth-graders working on math used a ruler to make perspective drawings and pictures of starbursts.

"We always try to connect the things they are working on in class to something they can do as an art project," said part-time arts teacher Jessy Davis, who was hired by principal Gay Kong using the school's discretionary funds.

A school leader who recognizes the importance of art is a key to making DOE's integrated arts program work, said Marilyn Cristofori, head of the Hawai'i Arts Alliance.

"Not every school has the opportunity to understand the importance of this," Cristofori said. "It's a tired story, but many are still concentrating on meeting the challenge of No Child Left Behind and achieving higher test scores, so that arts sometimes gets cut from the budget."

The new approach developed over the last five years has been to see that each student gets some arts education, even when there's little money in the budget for a regular arts class or arts teacher.

"There's fantastic research becoming available now that shows students do much better academically and socially in an arts-enriched classroom," Cristofori said.

Board of Education Chairwoman Karen Knudsen said that's the way it should be.

"We integrate arts and culture into our own lives every day, so arts should be an integrated part of education," Knudsen said. "The arts have long taken a beating in the schools, but teachers are finding new ways to bring them back."

McCarthy says students grow as they are exposed to the arts. Typically, he spends about 10 days in each school working alongside a regular teacher on a drama, music or creative moment project tied to something else the class is learning.

It's one thing, he says, to have a class read Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood. It's something completely different to watch the class produce its own theatrical production of one of those classics.

"They actually get more involved and interested every day as the production keeps getting a little more complex," he said. "By the sixth or seventh day, there's hardly a child who doesn't move forward and come to some sort of realization about what they are learning."

The 'Aikahi school community endorses the arts-based learning approach wholeheartedly. It even builds one of its big annual fundraisers around arts, having each student make a picture that is turned into a magnet that can be sold to parents, friends and supporters. The project raises several thousand dollars each year to buy art supplies for the students, Davis said.

This year the student artwork was selected by Original Art Works Institute, the marketing company, for just one of its three national Prism awards, which "honors student art that exemplifies the highest level of achievement." The award was on display in the cafeteria last week as students and others attended the annual arts enrichment showcase.

Graduating students also leave an art legacy with the school, designing and finishing their own ceramic slippers, which are displayed on the outside building walls.

DOE supports efforts like that in a number of ways, Ibara-Kawabe said.

The department offers teacher training courses that show how lesson plans for every grade subject and grade level can utilize art. It also has two roving artmobiles that visit schools on a regular basis; the second one is being renovated to not only exhibit art but show students a working artist's studio.

And, the department coordinates two big annual statewide student art exhibits that give students a chance to showcase their work.

"That's really important," said Kong, the 'Aikahi principal. "We don't just want the art to end up on a refrigerator at home. We wanted it framed and put in a place of prominence."

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.