Curated OER
Drawing Portraits Using a Grid
A well-developed art instructional activity is always great to have around. This instructional activity on portrait drawing includes a full procedure, modifications, background information on artist Chuck Close, recommended websites, and...
Curated OER
Rudyard Kipling's Rikki-Tikki-Tavi: Mixing Words and Pictures
Create meaningful illustrations to accompany stories in a web-based art and literacy lesson focused on "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" by Rudyard Kipling. The class takes a virtual art safari with the Museum of Modern Art and then discusses how...
Curated OER
Expressions - Activity 1
Young scholars create wax sculptures of a full body using mathematical calculations and information gathered from a video in this excellent art project. The lesson can be used along or within the unit provided.
Curated OER
Lesson: Looking Closer: The Artwork of Shinique Smith
A critical discussion regarding the nature of Shinique Smith's second-hand clothing art is the foundation for the activity. Critical thinkers fully analyze the meaning behind her work, taking close consideration of where the clothing...
Smithsonian Institution
Affirmation, Assimilation, and Acculturation: Middle School
Latin American culture is deeply embedded in American culture as a whole. From the Latin rock scene in San Francisco to the hip-hop world of New York, Latin American artists have influenced every genre of modern music. Learn about the...
Curated OER
Native American Storyteller Figure
Third graders explore cultures that use clay figures in the art of storytelling. They discover the importance of cultural history being passed through generations. They also form their own storyteller from a clay figure.
Curated OER
Native American Flutes - Activity 1
Students discuss Native American culture and musical techniques after viewing a video of Charles Littleleaf, a member of the Warm Springs tribe and a creator of Native American wood flutes.
Curated OER
Splat! Boom! Pow! the Influence of Cartoons in Contemporary Art
Students relate abstract expressionism and cultural influences on 1960's art. They use images appropriated from comic books to create a painting in the abstract expressionist style by changing the scale of the comic and reducing content...
Curated OER
The Meaning of Rock Art
Students examine the significance of rock art. They discuss and view examples of historical rock art, and create a design on a rock that tells a story using African and American symbols.
Brooklyn Museum
Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968
What role did women play in pop art during the 1950s and 1960s? The class researches the role of women in mid-century America and how those roles were portrayed through the pop art of the time. They use an excellent set of...
Brooklyn Museum
HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture
Visual arts lessons don't always mean the children need to make art. Here, they will practice using their visual literacy skills to analyze four images through the compare and contrast method. The first two images deal with gender...
Curated OER
Should Art Be for Art's Sake?
Students examine how European-America aestheticians (philosophers of art) do not all agree about the value and definition of art. students examine how some cultures do not have a distinct word or definition for art.
Polk Bros Foundation
American Presidents
Emanuel Leutze's painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. Alexander Gardner's photograph of Abraham Lincoln. What do these works of art tell us about the character of these American Presidents? After examining the techniques the...
Project Articulate
Textured Landscapes with Grant Wood
Explore the world of textured landscapes through the eyes of the famous artist, Grant Wood. Here is an elementary art lesson in which scholars learn about Grant Wood's life, view his work, draw their own textured landscape, and then...
National Gallery of Canada
Memories of the Past
Explore contemporary American Indian art. After viewing a set of images, class members discuss the design elements of techniques present, as well as how these artists represent history and culture. Learners examine the parfleche and...
Curated OER
Shoes and the Backyard Landscape
Your shoes get a lot of mileage in familiar places. Represent the places you have traveled the most with an art project based on a print of Indian People Wear Shoes and Socks by Juane Quick-to-See Smith. Kids trace their shoes and...
Curated OER
In the Shadow of My Country: A Japanese American Artist Remembers
Students analyze artist's themes and means of communication, think critically about their sources of information, and weigh claims of national security against the civil liberties of diverse groups.
Curated OER
Art and Culture
Learners compare and contrast the ways in which human figures are portrayed in rock art made by ancient Native American artists and in the drawings and paintings of historic European and American artists. They use images to identify...
Curated OER
Artists in Colonial America
High schoolers visit the Memorial Art Gallery's exhibit, "About Face: Copley's Portrait of a Colonial Silversmith." They complete a worksheet based on the career of John SIngleton Copley as a colonial American artist. They experience the...
Curated OER
Art and Artists: Diversity of Learners Adaptation
Students determine the style of place cards as well as how to display phots of artwork. They organize and design an art museum for parents and other students to enjoy. Students create place cards to explain the artwork, artist, as well...
Akron Art Museum
Storytelling Resist
The illustrations of Ezra Jack Keats in The Snowy Day inspire young artists to examine shapes in illustrations and to use these shapes to create their own watercolor resist painting.
Curated OER
Kwanzaa Window Book
Learners research Kwanzaa, focusing on the seven principles used in celebration, with an artistic instructional activity. They design their own window books to demonstrate comprehension of the principles and symbols of Kwanzaa...
Curated OER
Taming the Frontier
Learners examine paintings by Thomas Cole and Jasper Francis Cropsey as windows into American frontier life. They consider the pioneer's relationship with nature and the role of Native Americans in the pioneer's lives and settlements.
Curated OER
Grand Canyon Suite
Take a trip to the Grand Canyon! Lesson one explores how Ferde Grofe painted a musical landscape of America when he wrote the Grand Canyon Suite. Learners then examine art that shows the Grand Canyon in lesson two. Finally, lesson three...