Lesson At A Glance

Here’s a brief overview of the complete lesson. It’s also on your prep page in the Ready, Set, Go! section (below the lesson).

Colored buttons jump to each section in the full lesson plan below.

10 min – Students choose landscape parts

10 min – Finish by trying several spots

20 min – Make another landscape in tempera paint

3 min – Everyone helps

2 min – Place butcher paper

10 min – Trace circles – students draw and color with oil pastels

10 min – Have fun flying through maze using markers

SCROLL & TEACH

LESSONPLAN

Each section is a different color. Read over once and then you can SCROLL & TEACH using any device you like. It’s designed to work well with your phone.

Always try to greet students as they come in and kneel down when you can, so that you are on their level.

Encourage students to work with one piece of paper for a while. If someone uses the phrase, “free draw”, explain that artists’ choice is something only artists can do, while free-draw is something anyone can do. You want to use the phrase to elevate the students’ expectations of their work.

Everyone should take their time with the work and make a finished piece of art. Limiting the paper can also help kids focus on the work. If someone finishes in super-fast time, ask them what more they can do to the existing paper. Ask again several times – unless they appear overly frustrated; then you can allow them to move on to a new work.

Explain to your class how a lot of artists like to paint outdoor scenes, which we call landscape paintings. Sometimes they have houses or buildings in them. Ask your students what would be a good thing to include in a landscape picture, which would become the Most Important Spot

Note: The Most Important Spot is our phrase to use instead of the abstract compositional concept of Emphasis – The Most Important Spot is more concrete and easy to understand.

Try to get suggestions such as, house, tree, flowers, or  boat.

Students come to a table and choose the parts of their landscape by selecting reference from 3 groups:

1. Sky – choose 1 or 2 strips
2. Background (near and far) – choose 2, 3, or 4 strips
3. Most Important Spot – subject. – choose 1

Pre-cut the pieces of landscape and subjects into silhouettes (little or no blank paper showing around objects, and strips of background or sky). You can use the printouts below, which have 7 pages of material, or you can find magazine and catalog photos. The sky and background pictures are all in horizontal strips

NOTE: these prints have images that go to the edges. Please use edge to edge printing if you have that capability. If not, the images will be somewhat smaller, but they’ll work.

Arrange the sky and background parts for the landscape scene. Try a few different things.

NOTE: Do not let students work with their Most Important Thing yet.

Make sure you have lots of gluesticks, and help students put a lot of glue on the back of each picture. Press into place and smooth out any bubbles.

Have students place their last picture piece on their collage and look at it. Then have them move it to a new spot. Try one more and then decide which of the 3 spots is the best place for it.

Set the collages on stands so students can use as reference.

Paint pigment list:

• Napthol or Pyrrol Red
• Hansa or Light Yellow
• Pthalo Green (blue shade)
• Cyan or Cerulean Blue
• Ultramarine Blue
• Dioxazine Purple
• Magenta
• Burnt Umber
• Raw Sienna
• Titanium White (professional grade only)

Encourage students to draw guidelines first, but it’s not required.

Use tempera paints with getting and mixing plates/trays. Let students enjoy themselves and paint with large brushes first, moving to smaller brushes. Paint the distant background and sky first, then paint the nearer background and subject together. Talk about making the Most Important Spot even more important by making it a brighter warmer color. Landscape sky, trees, and grass are usually cool colors. Using a warm color can make something really stand out.

Remind them about the most important spot, but the main goal is to have a great time and take home artwork.

Painting can take the rest of your class time if the students are enjoying it. They can begin another painting if needed, or you can switch to oil pastels.

• Wash hands
• Super-wash brushes if used
• Put art supplies away
• Wipe tables & toss trash
• Remove any smocks (last)
• Check for items on floors and tables

Place a long sheet of white butcher paper on a 6 ft or 12 ft table, depending on your number of students. Secure the edges with some tape underneath at the ends.

Makes some super light guideline circles using a paper plate as a template. Make one circle for each student, staggering the circles around so they make a nice pattern with spaces in-between them all. It should look like giant polka dots.

Everyone gets a pencil and oil pastels – but wait for the teacher. Then the students draw and color flowers inside each circle. Keep all the artwork INSIDE the guideline.

Have everyone draw a large flower inside the circle, using the guideline as the ouside edges of the flower. The circle is not the art. It just helps you know how big to make the flower and the circle shape to draw it.

Encourage students to share pastels, and to blend colors together.

Explain the rules:

Everyone will get a marker, and take turns going through the maze of flowers. They’ll each pretend to “fly” through the flowers like a bee who needs to get home after a hard day of collecting pollen. As time allows, the bees can keep flying around the maze. They can even collect some more pollen by visiting flowers as an alternative version of the game.

Ask students to try and make flight pattern lines that look like drawings and designs.

Use the maze like a poster on your wall to decorate the class room if you like.

Week 28: Crazy Colors

Students will create paintings of familiar subjects using colors that are not realistic. They will also learn about using guidelines, or whisper lines, to help in creating accurate paintings, and use bold lines to outline areas of color.

Week 29: Trees & Leaves

Overview: Artists make trees by twisting pipe cleaners, and paper leaves are attached. Then everyone designs and creates a tiny tree house to go onto their tree sculptures. The whole thing is glued together and onto a base for a fun project to take home.