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As the students of Corinna Navas' second-grade class at Glenallan Elementary School glued down the final pieces to their art collage Friday, Navas gently urged them to wrap things up: They only had a few minutes before art class started.

Although the students' hands were sticky and paint was smeared on their shirts, they were actually finishing a multiple-week history and civics lesson on what makes a leader.

The mixed-media art projects they made to illustrate the defining characteristics of their chosen leaders was a focal point of the lesson thanks to a grant by the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, which lets qualified artists such as Marcie Wolf-Hubbard of Silver Spring incorporate art into traditional curriculum.

Under the grant, Wolf-Hubbard spent about four weeks visiting the second-grade classes at Glenallan. She taught students about mixed-media art, showed them how to make art out of items such as coffee grounds or an old train station set and built on the lessons they were learning about important people in history.

The result was a program that infused history, civics, writing, character development and art into a multifaceted lesson that the children enjoyed. Teachers hope connecting classroom instruction with art will help students better retain the information they learned, Navas said.

"It's a real-life purpose for learning things," she said.

Students started out by discussing what character traits define a leader. They held a mayoral election in class to choose someone who best exemplified those traits and then they studied famous leaders. Each student then chose a historic person to research and wrote a report about what made that person a leader. Finally, students developed a mixed-media collage with Wolf-Hubbard depicting that person.

From Civil War-era abolitionist Harriet Tubman to baseball player Cal Ripken Jr. to the late Latina singer Selena, the students got their hands dirty trying to figuratively convey what made their leader special. Visually expressing their studies will help the students remember it better, said Wolf-Hubbard, who has done several artist-in-residence programs in Montgomery County.

"They are learning by doing," she said.

Navas said art is especially helpful for younger students, who haven't fully developed their speaking and writing skills but intrinsically understand how to express themselves through art.

"Art is something that starts sooner [in life]," she said.

That kind of active learning is what the Silver Spring-based Arts and Humanities Council hopes to promote in schools through the grant, said Shellie Williams, the director of marketing and program services for the council.

"It gives the students more ownership in the process of learning," she said, adding the program engages all kinds of learners.

Williams said the competitive grant was started two years ago. It pays for a qualified artist and art supplies and is awarded twice a year to schools in Montgomery County. Grants range from $750 to $3,000.

Wolf-Hubbard, who has received several grants from the Arts in Humanities Council for similar programs in the county, said teachers can be hesitant to participate at first because they fear the program will take away learning time from an already busy schedule.

But it really is a time-saving tool that incorporates multiple subjects into one lesson, she said.

Second-grader Ian Weidmann liked making the collage for the same reason he liked his chosen leader, Leonardo da Vinci: They're both creative.

It's a quality he admires, as represented by his future career ambitions.

"I want to be a cartoonist when I grow up," he said.