Since creating art lesson plans is like creating content, it turns out we’re really good at it. We found this out by creating a series of 40-minute art classes starting with my 4-year-old nephew, who adored working on them collaboratively over Google Duo.
Here are six of our art lesson plans to work on with your favorite creative kids. Each class includes a warm up activity (usually a series of ice-breaker questions), then provides some explicit instruction (typically a video), guided practice, and independent working time.
They are all written as scripts, so you can just read the instructions directly to your eager students!
Lesson 1: Abstract Art
Lesson 2: Dreams
Lesson 3: Make a Game Board
Lesson 4: Cakes
Lesson 5: Spring Break
Lesson 6: Patterns
Bonus Tips & Ideas
Lesson 1: Abstract Art
Warm Up (10)
- (Note to teacher: Have some jazz for kids playing in the background.)
- Do you know the type of music playing?
- Jazz is a style of music that lets musicians just play what they feel, instead of reading musical notes on a sheet of paper.
- Let’s compare that to abstract art. (A little more on that topic.)
- Do you know what abstract art is?
- Abstract art is what you think and feel. Not what you see. An abstract artist uses colors and shapes to express his or her emotions and ideas. (More on this, and help with explanations.)
Explicit Instruction (10)
With a little help from artbasic.com, an art lesson plan emerged that helps students put these ideas into practice.
- Let’s talk about an artist named Stuart Davis. Davis explored how technology, architecture, and music come together—he thought that jazz was the musical equivalent to abstract visual art, channeling its energy with his bold colors and rhythmic geometries.
- Now let’s look at the art of Stuart Davis and read the phrases, words and numbers that we see in his artwork. Why do you think he might have used words in his work? What do the pictures remind you of?
Independent Working Time (20)
- Let’s take ten minutes to draw our favorite letters, numbers and words. We can put them anywhere we want on our own papers.
- Once we’re done with that, let’s look back at what we drew and start connecting the letters, numbers and words.
- (Note to teacher: They usually take off from there making more and more connections. It’s pretty amazing what happens. Lesson bonus. The kids get to practice reviewing the alphabet, words and writing.)
Lesson 2: Dreams
Warm Up (5)
- Who knows what a dream is?
- What type of dreams have you had?
Explicit Instruction (10)
- A dream is the pictures and thoughts you have while you are sleeping.
- Salvador Dali was a famous artist that would paint his dreams.
- Now let’s look at some of his art. (Note to teacher: the melting clocks really seemed to give the kids good ideas of what to do next.)
Guided Practice (5)
If you could create your own dream, what would you see?
Independent Working Time (20)
Draw your dream. It could be the dream you had last night or the dream you want to have.
Lesson 3: Make a Game Board
Warm Up (5)
- What is your favorite game?
- Do you play board games?
Explicit Instruction (5)
Watch this great video from Lunch Doodles with Mo Willems.
Guided Practice (10)
Let’s go back through the steps in the video. We’ll pause a few times so you can make your own game board using shapes and numbers. (Note to teacher: Skip the “special things” segment and “super bounce” to make this activity a bit easier.)
Independent Working Time (10)
Now that the structure of our boards is in place, let’s take some time to make a game on our own. (Note to teacher: Here’s one that came out of the class we hosted.)
Bonus Fun
Once everyone has finished their game board, see if you can play the games over the video call.
(In our class, only one student had dice, so he rolled for everyone. There wasn’t a real winner because everyone had a different number of boxes and numbers, but it was still fun for everyone!)
Lesson 4: Cakes
Warm Up (5)
- Who likes cake? What’s your favorite cake?
- Have you ever baked a cake?
Explicit Instruction (15)
- Wayne Thiebaud is an artist made famous by his paintings of cakes. And even though these look hard, the cakes are made using basic shapes that you all know how to draw.
- So, let’s learn how to draw our own cake.
Guided Practice (5)
Look at cake art for ideas. What kind of cake do you see? What colors? What do you like? What are you going to draw? (Note to teacher: This is easy for kids because they’ll easily tell you what they are going to draw from here.)
Independent Working Time (20)
Follow these instructions on how to draw a cake with a slice missing. Using a ruler helps.
Lesson 5: Spring Break
Warm Up (5)
- Who knows what the four seasons are? Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter
- Who knows what season we’re in right now?
- Do you have a favorite part of spring? What is it?
Explicit Instruction (15)
- The four seasons generally come with a change in weather
- Let’s learn about how the weather changes in spring
- Watch the Science of Spring Video
Guided Practice (5)
- What do you remember about what we just watched?
- Umbrella, sun, flowers, seeds, rocks, insects, slugs, rain, leaves sprouting on trees.
Independent Working Time (15)
Draw some of the things that you remember about spring.
Bonus Fun (kids can do to enjoy spring at home)
- Listen to birds, sing with them
- Watch birds with binoculars
- Draw the birds you see from the window, the patio or backyard
- Find insects under rocks, name them
- Breathe on mirrors to see your vapor
- Do some spring cleaning for your fort!
Lesson 6: Patterns
Warm Up (5)
- How was everybody’s weekend? What fun activities did you do?
- What are the days in a weekend?
- Did you know that a weekend is part of a pattern?
- Who knows what a pattern is?
Explicit Instruction (10)
- Patterns are groups of things that repeat. It could be a group of colors, shapes, gestures, sounds, pictures, or numbers.
- Let’s learn about patterns.
Guided Practice (5)
- What do you remember about what we just watched?
- Do you remember the letters pattern?
- Today, we are going to make our own patterns using our names. Everyone’s name pattern will look different, so we will share when we are all done.
- Let’s look at a couple of examples.
Independent Working Time (20)
(source)
- Write your name on the graph paper putting one letter in each square—you can use the little square or a bigger square with 4 squares in it.
- Repeat writing your name over and over, one letter per square.
- Pick one color for each letter. Like blue for I’s and pink for M’s.
- Color over each letter. Fill the entire page.
Bonus Fun (kids can do on their own)
- Laminate or cover your finished creation with contact paper, and turn it into a placemat, a painting, or even just great refrigerator décor!
- Find patterns around your house, and bring them to share at our next class.
Bonus Tips & Ideas
- On Fridays at 10 am we’ve been tuning into Wendy Mac’s #DrawTogether show.
- In this edition of her show she teaches us how to create a cabinet of shapes—she makes it so easy and fun!
- Then, once we learned about patterns, I had the students create a Cabinet of Patterns to build on our patterns art lesson.
An option for older kids is to create an abstract cabinet starting with a triangle—like this.
Bonus Fun For YOU
Squeezing this final tip in after publishing . . . in the past few art lessons, I got creative with virtual backgrounds. We end each class with everyone sharing their work. And I take a screenshot of my whiteboard and make it a virtual background. I say bye to the kids by walking into my art. 🙂
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