This is a great project to try at the beginning of the year or as your students are reviewing the alphabet and beginning to learn to write words and phrases. I got this idea from the book Dynamic Art Projects for Children. Ours are not exactly as the ones in this book, but very similar. We started by looking at the art of Stuart Davis and reading the phrases, words and numbers that we saw in his artwork. The … Read more…
I love these charming birds by the 1st graders! So colorful and a beautiful experience with watercolors. We read the lovely book The Boy Who Drew Birds, which is about the naturalist/artist John James Audubon. It is a great book that tells the story of how he loved to study birds and spent his free time as a child drawing and observing nature. Audubon banded birds to see if the same birds returned each year. It is a great book … Read more…
Here is an easy Starry Night inspired project that I like to teach to my kindergarten art classes. There is a great Van Gogh book for kids called “Getting to Know the Greatest Artists”, by Mike Venezia (my favorite series of art books for kids.) After viewing the swirling lines, dots and dashes that Van Gogh used, the students create a wild and swirly night sky scene with markers. A silhouettte landscape or city scene is added on the bottom … Read more…
Welcome to the 3rd post in my series On Teaching Art. The first post and the background behind this series is On Teaching Art: Art vs. Craft. The second post was On Teaching Art #2: Organizing Curriculum. The question posed for this installment is: How can art be integrated into math, science, social science, and literacy? That is a great question and I very often connect art lessons with their units of study in the classrooms. Integrating art with other … Read more…
This was one of my FAVORITE lessons this year. I just loved how each and every one of them turned out. They are so expressive and colorful. This is a new spin on a Starry Night lesson. I started by introducing Vincent Van Gogh’s art by showing prints of his art and by showing a movie: Then, the students drew swirls, dashed and dots to create MOVEMENT using markers. I told that this would be their night sky, so they … Read more…
2nd Grade Winter Landscapes For this project, we read a book about Grandma Moses: Grandma Moses (Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists) We discussed how to draw a river or road showing depth (by drawing it converging to a point in the distance). We talked about using size variation to show distance while drawing houses and other objects. The students cut out mountains from gray paper and a snowy patch from white paper (I walked them through this step-by-step). … Read more…
American Landscapes The 3/4s learned about Colonial times and Westward Expansion. The students watched a video about American landscape artists during the 19th century and they painted their own landscapes. One of the goals was to use inspiration from the environment to create a painting. The students chose a landscape scene from pictures of America. Painting lessons include how to add texture with a fan brush, how to mix colors and how to add shadows on a mountain. I showed … Read more…
I would like to introduce to you some of my favorite women artists. Molly, over at Her Speak, posted about some of her favorites. Without further introduction, here are some to get you thinking, exploring and looking. Shinique Smith Media: Fiber, Mixed Media Installation Status: Alive I just discovered her artwork this year. She had a solo exhibit at the contemporary art museum here in Madison. Her work is totally up my alley. Sandy Skoglund Media: Installations, Photographs, Conceptual … Read more…
During the summer, I’m going to dig back to some of my old lesson plans that I had posted on artsonia.com to show to you. Maybe I will revisit these again during the upcoming school year. This was favorite of mine and I don’t know why I stopped teaching it. The pictures all turned out gorgeous. CUBIST CATS for Second GradeThe kids learned about Picasso and his dynamic, fragmented Cubist artwork. 1. First we did a step-by-step drawing of a … Read more…
This is a tried-and-true art teacher lesson plan. The students enjoyed learning the story behind Grant Wood’s American Gothic painting. We read an article about his famous painting. They also enjoyed seeing various parodies of this artwork. They envisioned their own parody of this famous masterpiece. You can also read this book about his artwork:
