Curated OER
Repeat After Me: Repetition in the Visual Arts
Students explore one of the techniques artists often use to highlight important elements within a painting's composition and to move a viewer's eye around the canvass from highpoint to highpoint.
Exploratorium
Touch the Spring
Concave mirrors and the images they produce are traditional topics in the physics classroom. This resource explains how to set up an investigation of them, and it provides you with the explanation of concepts.
Curated OER
Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Signs
Students experience Pennsylvania Dutch culture and heretige as they identify and create Hex signs based on unity, focal point, nature and a personal meaning.
Curated OER
Joseph Stella Art: Line Designs
Students discover the focal point in pictures and create their own images using lines and space. In this art analysis lesson, students create a black dot on a white paper which becomes a focal point for the lines the student will paint...
Curated OER
Shaping the View: Composition Basics
Students examine the elements of composition in various artworks. They analyze and discuss paintings, explore "The National Gallery of Art" website, identify the shape of compositions in paintings, and draw a diagram.
Curated OER
Color Theory and Acrylic Painting
Students study color, acrylic painting and abstract art.
Curated OER
Natural Beauty: Looking Sharp
Students create covers for their "nature journals" using watercolor techniques and the artistic ideas of color, depth, and focal point. This instructional activity can be used in the Science or Art classroom and meets national standards...
Curated OER
Composition With Red Hat
High schoolers create a work of art that includes a red hat, either as a focal point or as an accent in the picture. The picture could be in color or black and white with the hat in red and they choose the medium that they want to use.
Curated OER
Shaping the View: Symmetry and Balance
Students view an image from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and identify the focal point of the painting. They discuss symmetry and balance as it pertains to the images. Students use the Student LaunchPad (linked to this instructional...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Lesson 1: In Depth with the Full Spectrum
High schoolers study the ways in which an artist can use color. They view various images of artwork and discuss the effect of color on spacial dimensions, focal points, tone, and mood.
Curated OER
Landscape Painting
Third graders paint a landscape that demonstrates the illusion of space. In this visual arts instructional activity, 3rd graders paint a creek with reflections as the focus and include images showing foreground, middle ground, and...
Curated OER
Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Signs
Sixth graders identify and create Hex signs, based on unity, focal point, nature and a personal meaning,
Curated OER
Advanced Art – Cultural Place-setting Still life
Upper graders view a series of films that depict rituals or celebrations as they occur in different cultural settings. They conduct a cultural investigation about one culture, brainstorm and research objects that have cultural or...
Curated OER
Forests and Treescapes with Romey Stuckart
Students discuss Romey Stuckart's painting, "The Cedar," paint a tempera or acrylic picture of a forest or treescape, using overlapping shapes, intense hues, and heavy brush textures, and discuss managed forest techniques preserve...
Curated OER
Sweet Stuff
Eighth graders become familiar with the artworks of Wayne Thiebaud. They focus on the works that depict sweets and use thickened paint. They discuss the size and visuals of Thiebaud's work and the balance that is so necessary in such...
Curated OER
Repeat After Me: Repetition in the Visual Arts
High schoolers identify repetition in the composition of a variety of art works, and how it is used to create a unified composition. They discuss compositional structure of a painting.
Curated OER
Art and the Berlin Wall
Students study the relationship between Cold War politics, the people who were affected by it, and the artists who examined it. They create their own "walls" using a spray paint graffiti procedure.
Curated OER
Thomas Hart Benton: The Sources of Country Music
Students examine artwork by Thomas Hart Benton. For this interdisciplinary lesson, students analyze the painting The Sources of Country Music, listen to folk music, and examine how recording technology and the movies shaped the images of...
Curated OER
Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Signs
Sixth graders recreate Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs using pre-cut wood or cardboard, compass, acrylic or tempera paints, and paintbrushes in this 6th grade Art instructional activity. The instructional activity is an excellent idea for...
Curated OER
Sweet Stuff
Eighth graders examine the artwork of artist Wayne Thiebaud and create paintings based upon techniques learned in this lesson for the eighth grade art classroom. Emphasis is placed upon the use of various textures, visual balance, and...
Curated OER
Field of Dreams
Students study several of Marc Chagall's paintings with an emphasis on his use of symbolic color and of space. They explore learn basic techniques for using Scholar colored pencils, and create an artwork using a baseball theme.
Mr. E. Science
Light
Where does bad light end up? In a prism! The presentation covers light, mirrors, lenses, and the structure of the eye. It also provides explanations of reflection, refraction, concave and convex mirrors and lenses, and a comparison of...
Curated OER
New Perspectives
Eighth graders imagine they are getting ready to "take off." They may imagine themselves in any type of aircraft or spaceship. They may then sketch themselves as passengers anticipating this moment.
Curated OER
Shaping the View: Composition Basics
Students are introduced to the concept of composition in visual art. They examine various compositional structures and practice identifying the focus of various pieces of art.