America’s Southwest Landscapes Art Lessons

March 21, 2013 By 7 Comments
America-Southwest-art-lessons

Bryce Canyon and Arches National Park in Utah offers the most humbling panoramas. Majestic rock formations, iron-rich colors and endless blue skies are an artist’s dream. These landscapes in my newest PDF offers the student artist a glimpse into the magic of Utah.

In this 15-page lesson plan, student’s learn how to draw a landscape focusing on perspective and space to create distance. Students use chalk and oil pastels to draw arches, hoodoos and cacti. Using the vibrant colors of the Southwest, children observe through photographs the rock formations and draw their own landscape.

Click here to read more….

 

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Filed Under: America, Chalk Pastels, Fifth Grade, Fourth Grade, SHOP FOR LESSON PLANS

American Flag Art Project

May 2, 2012 By 7 Comments
american flag art project

What can you do with a box of paper scraps and 40 minutes? An American Flag Collage, of course! My Kinders drew a box and lines on a piece of 12″ x 18″ white paper and then filled the square with torn blue scraps of paper. They added red papers of all textures and shades [...]

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Filed Under: America, Kindergarten

Liberty Bell Art Project

February 20, 2012 By 2 Comments
liberty-bell-art-lesson

Looking for an easy Liberty Bell art project? This lesson leans more towards craft than art but many standards are reinforced: composition, history, tracing/cutting, and color mixing. To start, my students sponge painted a piece of 12″ x 9″ paper with blue, red and white paint. I provided the paint, but left the children to [...]

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Filed Under: America, First Grade, Kindergarten

James Rizzi Skyscraper Art Lesson

February 3, 2012 By 9 Comments
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James Rizzi has left his mark on the world. His amazing illustrations has made an indelible impression on me and my students. Last Fall, my sixth graders did a unit on James Rizzi which included Faces and Simple Birds. This time we had fun with James Rizzi Inspired Skyscrapers. This is a super easy lesson [...]

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Filed Under: America, Buildings and Architecture, Sixth Grade, Watercolor Projects

American Indian Art Lesson Plans

July 4, 2011 By 2 Comments
American-Indian-covernew

Learning how art impacts every culture and civilization in the world is an important part of any art curriculum. I remember learning about Canada’s native population in second grade. Making igloos from marshmallows and creating my own “Eskimo” paper doll remains my most vivid childhood art experience. The art hasn’t changed much, but the verbiage [...]

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Filed Under: America, ART LESSONS by Subject, Culture Based, SHOP FOR LESSON PLANS, Third Grade

Grand Canyon Painting Lesson

July 2, 2010 By 17 Comments
Grand-canyon-DCG

Here is another lesson inspiration from the book,  Wow! America! by Robert Neubecker. A journey across the United States brings us to the great Grand Canyon. Layers of rock, canyons and eroded arches appear endless, broken up only by the slight variations of colors. This lesson focuses on creating depth in a picture. The concept here, [...]

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Filed Under: America, Art and Literature, Fourth Grade Tagged With:

Lady Liberty Art Lesson

June 25, 2010 By 14 Comments
lady-liberty

The Statue of Liberty is a great subject for teaching art techniques; watercolor, collage, tempera, marker…pick any medium and the project will turn out great. The drawing itself is quite simple, especially if you stick to the head and shoulders. You can read my basic instructions here. For this lesson, I panned out and asked [...]

Filed Under: America, Fifth Grade Tagged With:

Space Shuttle Art Project

June 22, 2010 By 21 Comments
shuttle

Wow! America! by Robert Neubecker is one of my favorite resources for art lessons. I love his dynamic illustrations. This picture book inspired this Space Shuttle art lesson. I created this lesson for my Kinder class but see how art teacher Hannah Millard from Highland Elementary adapted this lesson for fourth grade. I think the results [...]

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Filed Under: America, Art and Literature, Kindergarten Tagged With:

Buffalo Painting Art Project

June 16, 2010 By 7 Comments
Buffalo-DCG

Sometimes it takes a while for an inspiration to hit. I’ve had a calendar in my art stacks for about five years now. Paintings of the American West. The paintings depict the lives of Native Americans, complete with beautiful sunsets, buffalo hunts and vast plains. As part of my unit on Native American Costumes, Customs [...]

Filed Under: America, Animals, ART LESSONS by Grade, Second Grade Tagged With:

Hawaiian Dancers Art Project

June 11, 2010 By 1 Comment
Hawaiian-dancers

Last fall my husband and I went to Maui. It was stunning; the art, food, music, beaches…all beautiful and inspiring. I vowed to use some of my memories to create an art project for my students.  What you’ll need: 12″ x 18″ white drawing paper (or watercolor paper if you have it) Black water-proof marker [...]

Filed Under: America, Fourth Grade, Watercolor Projects Tagged With:

Santa Barbara Mission Clay Project

April 30, 2010 By 9 Comments
may 028

Third and Fourth Grade students in California study Missions. We are lucky to have the beautiful Santa Barbara Mission right in our city. Here is an easy project that I incorporated into my ceramics unit but you could easily do the same project with air dry clay and acrylic or even tempera paints.  Start with [...]

Filed Under: America, Ceramics, Third Grade Tagged With:

Lady Liberty Gets A Make-Over

November 6, 2007 By 5 Comments
Statue-of-Liberty-Art-project

This lesson came from the summer ’07 issue of Arts and Activities Magazine. Writer/Art teacher Debra Sweeney created a great project that tied American history with personal history. Her lesson involved researching family trees, but I decided to stick with the pure art possibilities of this amazing monument. Drawing Lady Liberty Draw Lady Liberty in [...]

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Filed Under: America, Fifth Grade, Fourth Grade Tagged With: