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Author Archives: Marcia Beckett

About Marcia Beckett

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.

Pattern Block Pictures

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Colorful geometric artwork featuring hexagons and diamond shapes, set against a black background.

Earlier this year, I bought the packet “Teaching the Elements of Art” made by Teaching in Paradise.  This shape tracing project was included in the packet.  With Courtney’s permission, I am sharing the beautiful results my students produced. We used pattern blocks that I had in my classroom. The students arranged the blocks to make shape pictures and traced them.  After the designs were traced, they outlined them with a darker color and colored them in.  Some of the students … Read more… →

Coloring Book Review and Giveaway!

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Coloring Book Review and Giveaway!

**This is a cross-post from my personal art blog.  To enter the giveaway for a free copy of this coloring book, please leave a comment on the original post.** Today I am part of a TLC Book Tour for a new coloring book called  Inkspirations Fruit of the Spirit.  There are a few reasons I decided to be a part of this book tour.  1) I wanted to show you how we have enjoyed coloring books.  2) This is a … Read more… →

Frank Stella Inspired Pictures

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Colorful abstract drawing with swirls and curves in shades of pink, blue, green, purple, orange, and yellow.

First, I want to give a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who follows my blog.  I appreciate your support in reading my blog, leaving comments, pinning images and sharing my posts.  Whenever I get a positive comment or email from a reader, it just MAKES MY DAY and makes all the time worthwhile.  Without this kind of feedback and support, I would not continue blogging! A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who bought resources during the TPT Best Year Ever … Read more… →

New Products and Big Sale! Up to 28% off

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Discover our Elements of Art sketchbook, featuring sections on line, shape, color, value, texture, and space.

Teachers Pay Teachers is throwing a huge Back-to-School sale.  I am joining in.  I keep my prices affordable as it is, but this sale is a huge steal!  I have over 50 art teacher resources available in my shop.  Everything is 20% off (EDIT: except the HUGE GROWING BUNDLE,  because that is already ridiculously cheap) August 1-2.  Add the coupon code: BestYear for additional savings (28% off total). I have some resources you might be interested in! NEW:  Elements of … Read more… →

Books for the First Day of Art Class

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A collage of art-themed books with the text "Ideal for the first day of art class.

I like to start the first art class of the year with a children’s book about art and something quick and easy to get the kids making art.  Here are some of the books I have used over the years on the first day of school or throughout the year.  I like to read general books about art & creativity on the first day.  I save the books about specific artists or topics for when we study those. Here are … Read more… →

10 Ways to Calm Down: A Free Printable Poster

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A list titled "10 Ways to Calm Down" with suggestions like breathing exercises and talking to a grown-up, made into a free printable poster with illustrated children.

Here is a fun poster that can be used to hang in your classroom or print out for kids.  These are 10 tips to help kids deal with strong emotions. Click to download the free PDF:  10 Ways to Calm Down The download is sized at 11″ x 14″ but you could probably easily choose to fit to 8.5″ x 11″ in your printer settings. Here is the backstory behind why I made this poster.  I am a Girl Scout … Read more… →

Watercolor Flower Doodles– Easy & Fun!

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Colorful, hand-drawn flowers in various shapes, sizes, and patterns on a white background, enhanced with delicate watercolor accents.

I hope you are having a good summer.  I have spent some time doodling with watercolors, my favorite artsy thing to do.  Today I am going to show you how I transform puddles of watercolor to flower doodles.  Here is an example of a finished watercolor flower doodle. This step-by-step is fun, summery art project for you or your kids to try.  I like to share what is fun and exciting for me, because maybe you will take something from … Read more… →

Patterned Tape and Wood Scrap Sculptures

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Colorful abstract art pieces featuring various patterns and textures. Rolls, rectangles, and geometric shapes are displayed alongside elements like wood scrap.

What can you make with patterned tape and wood scraps? This is an open-ended project that is sure to delight your kids.  For some reason, colorful patterned tape is very appealing to kids (and many adults.) Materials used: The students selected pieces of wood and then wrapped the blocks in colorful tape.  These pieces were taped or glued to a piece of mat board. The kids enjoyed making their sculptures.  They mixed and matched tape patterns and colors.  Blocks were … Read more… →

Monthly Planner for Scout and Club Leaders

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Monthly Planner for Scout and Club Leaders

Several weeks ago I was looking for a monthly planner to use as a Girl Scout leader.  Nothing I found had everything I wanted:  monthly calendar pages, space for writing notes, attendance roster, contact information list, meeting agenda plans, badge & award trackers…  so I decided to make my own!  I sent all of my pages to a printer and got mine printed in a spiral bound book.  The PDF of this adorable monthly planner is available in my TPT … Read more… →

Clay Wall Hangings: 2nd Grade

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Clay Wall Hangings: 2nd Grade

Here is a fun and easy project that I taught to my 2nd graders.  We used regular firing clay and gloss glazes. Here is a video I made for my students to demo how to make the wall hangings.  This was before I got my new camera so the quality isn’t as great. Cassie Stephens has done a similar wall hanging project with just the initials.  Next year, I might try that! 

Doodled Drawings, Collages and Sculptures

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A colorful, abstract drawing featuring various intricate patterns and shapes, resembling a whimsical, mosaic collage creature.

It’s summer time!  This wrapped up my 10th year of teaching at my current school and 13 1/2 years teaching total.   The good news is that since I was so busy this year, I have a huge backlog of art projects to share with you.  I will probably write them all up this summer and then save some of them for the busy times next school year. Doodle patterns are always good for focus and concentration. This project is also … Read more… →

Peace Prints with 1st Grade

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Colorful drawing of a peace sign with red hearts inside the segments, surrounded by stars and hearts on a vibrant background, ideal for Peace Prints.

I was trying to sit down to write a blog post yesterday and I was thinking about how when the world seems to be in chaos, writing a blog post about kids’ art seems insignificant in the grand scheme of things.  I had a post about recent doodling projects my students made in the works, but that didn’t seem quite appropriate after the events on Sunday morning.  When something big like the attacks in Orlando, do you go on writing … Read more… →

Butterfly Origami Gift

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A wire birdcage filled with colorful origami birds and adorned with vibrant butterfly origami on the outside.

The other art teacher at my school is retiring this year.  I wanted to put together a collaborative present by students to honor her.  We were both hired here at the school 10 year ago.  She loves origami so I knew it had to be something origami-related. I had all of her 7th and 8th grade students learn how to fold origami butterflies.  Now, I am terrible at origami, so I wanted it to be relatively easy to figure out … Read more… →

Published Article

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Published Article

Great news! I have been published in the Summer issue of School Arts magazine. I wrote an article about artwork my students made after learning about the art of contemporary artist Justin Vining.  You can read the article here.  I wrote a blog post last year all about this project:  Inspired by Artist Justin Vining. I love Justin’s artwork and you can see pictures of his artwork on his website.

Chicks at School

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Handmade art of three yellow chicks with feathers on paper, ideal for school projects or classroom decoration.

We have some chicks at school.  Chicks, like baby chickens. One of the science teachers taught the kids about the life cycle of chickens and the kids watched as the eggs were incubated and hatched. They grow so quickly! With all the excitement of the hatching chicks, the students were thrilled to create some chick artwork.  Here is a mural/bulletin board that students in grades 2-3 worked together on. Next, we did a step-by-step project in kindergarten to make a … Read more… →

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