Are you looking for art projects that go along with children's books?
Here are 10 art projects that go along with children’s books! I love to include children’s books in my art lessons. It’s a great “hook” to capture their interest and also it provides a way for students to see beautiful illustrations and learn about concepts, cultures and other people.
In this post, I share a few of my favorite children’s books that go along with art projects. Amazon Affiliate links have been used at no extra cost to you. The money earned goes towards maintaining this free website (and for buying art supplies!)
Henna Hands
Henna Hands: Taking inspiration from Mehndi, students create their own decorative hands picture. After drawing on white paper, they cut these out and glue to a piece of Scratch art paper, where they add more designs! Unfortunately I cannot find the holographic glitter Scratch art sheets anymore, but you can use rainbow Scratch art sheets instead.
Snowglobes
Snowglobes: Using a circle tracer, students make their own snowglobe, with festive winter imagery inside. For a printable snowglobe template, go here for additional resources.
This is the lovely book called Elmer, about an elephant who is different than the other elephants. After reading the book, we make our own colorful patchwork elephants! We used this patchwork template to make our elephants. You can get the free high resolution PDF here.
What Lives In Your Heart
These fun heart drawings include all kinds of things that the student loves! Anything they love can go in their heart: pizza, mom, hamsters, fish, flowers, friends, sports- the sky is the limit. If you’d like the heart template, you can find it here. I like to read the book The Shape of My Heart to go along with this project.
Owl Art Projects
The book Abracadabra! the Magic of Trying, is a wonderful SEL book about giving things your best try and not giving up. After reading this book, we draw step-by-step owls and color with crayons. Then, we use watercolor paints for the backgrounds. We also make these fun clay owls as an introduction to using slabs and texture in our clay projects.
Monster Art Project
These are two of my favorite books about monsters. The first is called Monsters Love School, which is great for the beginning of the year. He also has one called Monsters Love Colors. Another book I really like is The Color Monster, which is another SEL book about feelings. We used the drawing guides and description printables from the Expressive Monkey to make our texture rubbing monsters. These are really easy to make. You simply draw your monster, outline in Sharpie and then use crayon rubbings on the monster. Place a textured rubbing plate under your paper and then rub on top with crayons!
Frogs in a Pond with Claude Monet
Here are those fun cardboard circles again! We learned about Claude Monet and his lily pad paintings. We read this book called Philippe in Monet’s Garden. To make this project, we painted with watercolor paints on the circles. Then, cut out the construction paper lily pads and add colored tissue paper to the lily pads. Some years I have just done this on regular paper. I also did this when we had distance learning and the kids drew their frogs at home using this simple slideshow presentation.
Peace Art
There’s a lot of art you can do related to the theme of Peace. The Peace Book is a great book to start an art project about peace. Everything Todd Parr has done is wonderful, I’m a big fan. In this peace blog post, I share a template you can use to start your peace art. You could make posters, a peace quilt or peace styrofoam prints.
If you have read this far, thank you! I have about 20 more children’s books to go along with art projects that I am planning on sharing in the near future.
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Marcia is an elementary art teacher and loves painting, drawing, sculpture, art journaling and clay. Her blog, Art is Basic, features many exciting art projects for kids.
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What a great variety of books and lesson ideas!
Thanks! I have so many more to post about too… thanks for your monster sheets, we use them every year!