Lesson At A Glance

A brief overview of each step. Buttons jump to each section for detailed information.

5 Min – Set Up for tempera paint

5 Min – Clean up paint

10 Min – Practice drawing big shapes of bird

10 Min – Medium sized bird drawing

5 Min – Discuss birds eye view

5 Min – Paint the lightest spots

22 Min – Glue bird to paper, paint

3 Min – Everyone helps

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 best with your phone.

Kneel down so that you are on their level. Bending over emphasizes the differences in your height, while kneeling makes them feel more important.

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.

Brushes should be nylon for springiness and durability. Round brushes are the most versatile.

Have 7 bottles of paint ready, using 3 alike colors of cool and 3 alike of warm, and white. Students will choose either warm or cool colors. Explain that you can’t mix the two or it will turn into browns or grays.

Let students help if you can. Set out paper towels, a brush and water container for each student. Put smocks on.

This is something you might want to practice once on your own before class, so you get a feel for how much paint to use and where to place it on the paper.

You’re going to have students make 3 areas of streaky color, not mixing much. There will be a top color, middle color, and bottom color. It can be arranged differently, but we want variety and streaks if possible.

Have your artists choose either warm or cool colors for their background. Then go around with the first color bottle and a bottle of white. Place a small blob of each in the middle top of the page close to each other. Change to the other group’s first color (warm if you began with cool) so those artists can get started too. have them wipe their brush all way back and forth from side to side just up at the top of the page, but only a few times so as not to blend too much.

Then change bottles for the second colors and go around again placing a blob of it and white in the center, and then the third color with white in the bottom area of the paper.

Students should only use about 4 back and forth strokes of their brush for each color. They may do a bit more to finish and that’s ok as long as they don’t blend the colors all into one flat tone.

Fill the paper with color but keep it as thin as possible. If you have ridges and globs on the paper, you can get paper towels out and let students do a couple of sweeps to wipe off excess paint (not too much or it will blend more).

• Set paintings aside to dry
• Double-check for names
• Empty water containers and get clean water
• Super-wash brushes if used
• Wipe tables & toss trash

Some students may say they already know how to draw a bird. That’s great, and they can draw it the way they know how, but then encourage them to look at the handout and learn a NEW way to do it. Everyone should draw each part of the bird using the examples of wing shapes, head shapes, and body shapes from the print.

Now everyone can use the large paper to draw their own bird however they want.

When they finish the drawing, they can go over it with a black marker.

Help the students cut their bird out and set it aside to use later. If the cutting is not super close or accurate, that’s ok. It will be glued, and painted on the background.

Read the teacher talk to walk kids through visualizing. You might have them practice covering one eye first. Have students look at the pictures below if they’re having trouble understanding this.

Tap a picture to open a larger viewer.

Students should already have their smocks on. Give everyone a small paint brush, new water container, paper towel, their cut out bird drawing, and their painted backgrounds from earlier.

Before painting their birds, students will need a glue stick to attach their paper birds to the background painting. If the background is not quite dry in places, that’s ok. Paint is like glue too.

Once the birds are glued down, the artists can begin painting the bird in bright colors with opposites – using warm colors if they have a cool background, or cool colors if the background is warm.

• 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

Print all of your PDFs from the lesson plan and cut any references apart as needed.

Week 20: Balance

Balance in real life is understandable, but what about visual balance? Students learn that people like to see things that look balanced so they don’t feel like they might fall over if they were real. Several exercises, a slideshow, and projects help with understanding and practice using balance in artwork.

Week 21: Shapes & Harmony

A color wheel flower for warmup opens the class. Then students will find shapes in reference photos and collect as many shapes as they can match. Finally, they’ll learn how art needs harmony just like music does, using repetition as a method as well as reviewing the Most Important Spot (emphasis).