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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.

Graphic Design for 5/6s

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Colorful abstract collage with overlapping letters B, R, D, and A in various patterns and vibrant background splashes, showcasing innovative graphic design elements.

How is design used in daily life?  What do graphic designers create?  How can we investigate a variety of symbols and fonts?   How can we use appropriate symbols, colors and fonts to represent ourselves visually?  Using letters and numbers, the 5/6s created a design that is meaningful to them.  They learned about the artists Robert Indiana and Bradbury Thompson. Logos, careers and originality were the concepts stressed in this unit.  After the kids made these images, I shrunk the pictures … Read more… →

Fabric Quilts

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Patchwork art with colorful fabric shapes, buttons, and glittery gems on a textured beige quilted background.

Primary Quilt Squares Why do people make quilts?  How can a quilt tell the history of a family?  Can a quilt be art?  What is a pattern?  The Primaries discussed these questions and viewed pictures of quilts. In Science class, the kids are learning about properties and attributes.  How do you observe things?  How do you use your 5 senses to learn more?  You can use your eyes to see and your fingers to feel these quilts.  You can describe … Read more… →

Pop Art Portraits

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Four colorful Pop Art portraits of faces with varying skin tones, eye colors, and hair colors displayed in a grid.

These lovely Pop Art portraits were created by our 2nd graders this week.  We read a book about Andy Warhol and watched a video about Pop Art.  We looked at and discussed Andy’s use of bright colors, repetition and popular subject matter.  The artwork we focused on was his self portrait.   To prepare, cut a 9×12″ piece of paper into 4 pieces.  You will need one quarter piece for each child.  The kids looked in a mirror to draw … Read more… →

Mondrian Collage– Primary Colors

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Abstract artwork by Piet Mondrian featuring a vibrant collage of geometric shapes and primary colors like red, yellow, blue, black, and white lines.

kindergarten Primary color Mondrian design We did this project last week to introduce the primary colors-red, blue and yellow to the kindergartners.  We looked at the artwork of Piet Mondrian and discussed his use of color– primary colors + neutral black and white.  We described the lines and shapes.  The kids then made their own Mondrian-inspired artwork using construction paper shapes.  Artwork by Piet Mondrian    

Water bottle Flowers

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Vibrant flowers crafted from painted water bottles, arranged closely together.

At the very end of last year, my third grade students cut apart plastic water bottles to make these flowers.  I started them off by cutting the bottom of the bottle off, then they continued with scissors.  You can round off the edges to make the petals look more realistic.  Then, these were painted with acrylic paint.  I hot glued these down to a large white piece of foam board.  Some kindergarten students also made little round lumps of model … Read more… →

Alphabet Art from the First Graders

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Colorful abstract drawing with letters, shapes, and the name "Alexandra" at the center. This playful piece exudes the charm of Alphabet Art.

What is a focal point?  How do artists arrange their composition?  What is emphasis?  How have words and letters been used in art?    These are some of the questions the Primaries explored in their first unit.  We looked at the art of Stuart Davis by viewing a slideshow.  The Primaries created a work of art using letters and numbers.  They choose one letter or number to use as the focal point and then surrounded it with other letters and … Read more… →

What can you do with a dot?

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This colorful abstract art uses yellow and green shapes, surrounded by purple and red dots on a white background.

What is art?  What materials can be used to create art?  How do we properly use art materials?  These are the questions that the Nest (grade K) discussed at the beginning of the school year.  They also learned about the most very basic mark in art… the DOT.  They looked at a slideshow of artworks that use dots.  The class read the book: The Dot.Then, to make their artwork the Nest students cut out large dots (circles) and glued them … Read more… →

  • Banner with colorful artwork promoting an art shop featuring kindness coloring pages, artist activities, and resources for teachers.