Curated OER
I Spy (Camouflaged Animals in Art!)
Make connections about animal characteristics and the animal's environment. For this animal characteristics lesson, students use a piece of art as a springboard for a discussion about animals and camouflage. Students choose an animal...
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Looking at Human Struggle Through The Language Arts Curriculum: The Faces of Slavery
Sixth graders examine the use of slavery in the United States. Using a map, they draw the route of the Tecora and Amistad voyages. Individually, they write an essay describing their opinions on whether the Africans on the ships should be...
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Winter Wonderland Painting
The examples of art at the top of this page speak for themselves. Here is a fun and lovely project that gets kids outside to observe how snow falls on trees and how various trees are structured. They use crayons, tempera paint, and...
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Expressing Emotions Through Art Lesson 2: Everybody Needs Somebody
Students examine works of art that depict two people who care for each other, and analyze how artists use line, shape, color, and space in works of art. They use line, shape, color, and space to create drawings that depict two people...
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Pop Art Ice Cream Painting
Students create paintings of ice cream treats using Pop Art as an inspiration while developing skills in painting in this 4th through 6th grade Art instructional activity. Included with the instructional activity are possible extensions...
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Pinwheel Modern Art Styles
Students explore artistic design by creating pin wheel models in class. In this modern art instructional activity, students examine historic art work of Van Gogh, O'Keeffe and Mondrian before emulating their work on construction paper....
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Labyrinths
Whether studying metaphors or Greek mythology, this labyrinth project is a fantastic lesson plan to add to your unit. It includes two versions of the labyrinth; making it with yarn or stone. If your materials are limited, you can even...
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Strong Descriptive Writing: James and the Giant Peach
Support your writers! Clear procedures and appropriate support make this a superb resource for elementary writing instruction. Ready your class to compose original descriptive paragraphs inspired by the episode in Roald Dahl's James and...
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Positive/Negative Bugs
Bugs can be creepy - and fun! Kids create a positive and negative design by repeatedly drawing a simple insect overlaid with a geometric shape. The outcome is really neat and will help build spacial reasoning, visual acuteness, and...
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Egyptian Mummy Cases
Here is an activity I'd like to do with my class! They researching the ins and outs of Egyptian culture, hieroglyphs, symbolism, and art, then use what they know to create realistic or stylized Mummy cases. These cases need to include...
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Bodies In Motion: Shapes and Gestures
Students use geometric shapes to describe body parts. In this geometry lesson plan, students use geometry vocabulary as they discuss body parts. They practice drawing bodies using shapes based on a wooden model that is poised to show...
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See If You Can Draw
Students create works of art by solving art problems in this game for the elementary classroom. Pencils and paper are the suggested materials, but the lesson can be adapted in various ways for different levels and circumstances.
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Wet Chalk Drawing
Students create original works of art using chalk, tempera paints, and paper in this art activity for elementary and middle level classrooms. The lesson includes ideas for displaying or mounting finished works of chalk art in the...
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Drawing with Wire
Students identify visual arts by examining visual models. In this art analysis lesson plan, students discuss the history of Keith Haring by researching information on the Internet. Students view images showing Keith Haring's work and...
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Chalk Drawings
Young scholars create their own chalk drawings on a chalk board inspired by the work of Keith Haring. In this chalk drawings lesson plan, students draw symbols and lines in different colors.
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Open Your Eyes To Art!
Students help create a colorful bulletin board for classroom art displays in this short activity for the early elementary classroom. The activity, which can use a variety of items, includes product ideas and resource links to find very...
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Architecture Is Elementary
Students learn the four orders of architecture: Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite and create their own 3D structures in this Art/Art History lesson for fourth through sixth grade. The lesson includes a book resource list for lesson...
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Shoe Fish
Fishy, fishy, fishy, fish! Kids take off their shoes and trace them to create fish for a large aquarium art project. Each traced shoe shape is decorated with gills, fins, scales, and eyes, then hug on an aquarium background. Three book...
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Fish Banners
An art lesson involving fish can accent a wide variety of subjects. Here are the steps needed to create a fish banner with paint, shapes, cardboard, and paper. This would be a nice way to start or finish a unit on fish or underwater...
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Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Words: Art, Art History, Language Arts, Creative Writing
Students write a story inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and then try their hand at their own rendition of this famous piece of art. In a twist, students incorporate the stories into their paintings.
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Scratch Art
Students create a piece of art using crayons, black paint and toothpicks. They cover a paper with bright crayon color, paint over the crayons with black paint and then scratch a design over the black paint in a an outline of their choice.
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Put Your Best Facade Forward-Lesson 1
Students are introduced to the applied arts and focus on the applied art of architecture. They examine how architecture communicates messages about the people in a community who use a building. Students study the facade of their school...
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Palace Adventure
Young language arts learners write and illustrate a short fantasy story based on the book Corduroy. First, learners need to develop a character. Then, through their writing and illustrations, they take their characters on adventures...
Denver Art Museum
Descriptive Haiku
Even though this is technically an art lesson, haiku poetry is actually the main focus! Learners view photographs of Japanese tea caddies. They list five descriptive words for the caddies, then write haiku poems using the caddies as...