When buying school supplies for my kids, I always bought extra for the teacher to use in the classroom. Who can pass up cheap notebooks, paper and .99 cent markers. My kids are older now and I’m not buying school supplies, but with the help of DonorsChoose.org, I can donate school supplies to any classroom, any subject, anywhere in the country.

Donors Choose is a non-profit website where teachers can post classroom project requests. The teacher describes the project, the learning objectives and how much it’s going to cost. Donors can choose age group, and what subject they want to support. You can pay for the whole project or partial payment, so anyone can contribute large or small budget.

To honor the International Day of Charity on September 5th, our foundation donated lots of basic art supplies to elementary classrooms in California, South Carolina, Illinois and Georgia. It’s enormously satisfying to get kids the supplies they need to do art.

We also donated to classrooms that want to use art to enhance academic learning. These teachers have great things planned. Check it out:

• We bought some clay and paints to help some 5-6^th grade students in Illinois learn about indigenous cultures as well as a globe and world map to help them expand on how people connect themselves to the environment.
• We helped a librarian in Illinois purchase a puppet theatre to help students bring books to life and learn to express themselves through role play.
• We bought clay and mini-figs to help an elementary class in North Carolina bring lessons to life with stop motion animation
• We contributed towards a 3D Printer, to help 8th graders in Michigan participate in and architecture course to design a sustainable building for their community.
• We helped with Post-it Pads, markers, dry erase boards, Playdoh and glue help students brainstorm, visualize and create prototypes while integrating art into science and engineering in Florida.
• Clay and dinosaur models to help second and third graders in California learn about the time the dinosaurs roamed the Earth!
• Craft jars, collage materials and dot markers to help kindergarteners in Illinois practice their handwriting and storytelling.

I hope this inspires you to donate. There are plenty more art projects that need funding, but there are also needs in music, science, geography and much more. Let’s help the teachers, so they can teach great things to our kids.