MAY 12 – 16 • Students draw 3 still life objects and color them with oil pastels. They’re cut out and the children have fun sliding them up, down, right and left until they find a good spot for each of them, one at a time. All are glued into place for a nice still life artwork. Then the objects are turned into silly cartoons and colored with markers for a fun finish to the lesson.

MAY 5 – 9 • Students enjoy having choice of things to do and subject matter. Stations are set up and the class will split into several groups, rotating

APRIL 28 – MAY 2 • Students finish their Box Animal Safari sculptures by painting them in either realistic or expressive patterns and colors.

APRIL 21 – 25: The first week of making a big 3D Painted cardboard project has students building an animal out of boxes and tubes. This week they’ll prime the sculpture so that next week, when it’s dry, they can paint it like the animal – or in wild crazy colors! Today they also warm up with artists’ choice and have an animal prints print-making session.

APRIL 14- 18 • After a warmup and then drawing eyes, students use symmetry and mirrors, to learn insights about the face. Then with instructions, they draw and paint their own portraits using tempera paints on watercolor paper.

APRIL 7 – APRIL 11: Artists get to paint their big animals using acrylic paints. They get to choose realistic color or crazy fun color. Then the Big Shapes idea is reinforced, along with review of The Most Important Spot. They’ll create artwork in oil pastels by drawing a big shape first, such as a circle, and then creating designs inside to color. One of these is a face inside the big head shape, which previews their self-portrait coming up next week.

March 31 – April 4 • Students will start with an expressive and wild oil pastel of an elephant by looking at a photo. Then they learn how to see big shapes and draw it more realistically before painting in watercolors. The second half of the lesson is about exaggerating and simplifying to create a fun cartoon. They draw it and then sculpt their cartoon out of air-dry clay. A little hat is made out of paper to fit on it’s head for a bit of whimsey.

MAR 24 – 28 • 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.

MAR 17 – 21 • 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.

MAR 1 -7 • Students have fun choosing subject matter as cut out pieces. They design a landscape composition by sliding the shapes around to make a collage. They make a Most Important Spot using an object. Then a painting is made, and color is also used to make a spot more important. After painting the kids can create and play a giant maze game where they are bees traveling home through the flowers.

FEB 24 – 28 • Students will enjoy a full lesson where they get to make their own choices. Instead of just letting them loose to play, we provide a framework that helps them make good choices while still being in charge. They’ll choose cards for subjects, such as “animals” or “flowers”, and cards for color schemes, and materials to use. The first project uses reference and observation, while the second half uses imagination.

FEB 17 – 21 • Students will review radial balance and create basic color wheels. They will also learn how opposites make browns and greys, using these mixes on a fun cartoon painting of a cow.

FEB 10 – 14 • Emphasis is one of the most important aspects of good composition. However, this is a lot of abstract thinking for kids, so we say, “every artwork needs a Most Important Spot!” The lesson helps students think about what is in artwork, and to distinguish between wallpaper type designs and art that has that important spot that you see first. We begin with a fake art show using textures on paper but nothing else on them. Then we do some exercises with color. The end of the class has students taking the art show down and fixing the work by adding an important spot.

FEB 3 – 7 • Students learn about radial symmetry and how we see it all over. Then they’ll make spiral designs with markers and a radial design too. These are cut out and put together later to make a rolling moving artwork that animates! They also create a fun page of circles with radial symmetry using oil pastels.

JAN 27 – 31: We start out with looking at the symmetry of a human face from the front. Then we move into a fun project where students all make a hangable painted fish to turn the room into a giant aquarium.

January 20 – 24 • Students have fun mixing up a bunch of variations of greens. They learn that colors are not simple and basic, but that there are thousands of versions of just greens alone. A geometric abstract design is drawn, a mixing game is played, and then the colors are used to fill in the drawing with all kinds of greens.

JAN 13 – 17
Students will learn (or review) symmetry and how it relates to balance. They’ll stand on one leg to experience balance, and then create two artworks; one with vertical symmetry and one that’s horizontal. First they’ll draw and color an animal face using a step-by-step guide, and then a boat with a reflection. The reflected part is smeared with a white pastel to make a watery effect.

JAN 6 – 10: Students become art mad scientists, and do 3 painting experiments to learn that shadows are made with opposite colors instead of grays. This also teaches them how artists must try different things, and that artwork can be easily changed. A game of stickman is played to give them a big hint, and there are fun exercises as well as several periods where they get to do their own ideas, called Artists’ Choice.

DEC 16 – DEC 20 • The students get to create a winter nature painting. Snow shows the colors of shadows, and white has many different shades of colors. To learn these insights, we begin by painting snow. building up a painting using 3 kinds of whites, shadows, and big tree trunks. Finally, we finish it off with a dash of bright red. A cardinal bird is painted and glued to a branch. It’s a wonderful painting that looks great in a frame and that kids are very proud of.

DEC 9 – DEC 13 • Students will make multiple art prints using a simple technique to engrave a design into styrofoam. They will also create a frame for the print and paint it with acrylics. The lesson will teach how printing creates duplicates and they are a mirror image. Also, how to plan and design a simple printed piece of art and make a great presentation. The end result is a wonderful holiday art gift!

DEC 2 – DEC 6 • We use the idea of seeing double to have fun, and reinforce several artistic insights. Students learn symmetry with a collage using double-cutting and a mono print fold-over. There’s a fun “lines and tigers” (get it?) game that morphs into a shadow lesson using a mirror image later one. A real mirror is also used to finish half a face.

NOV 18 – 22 • Students have fun learning how to make different cartoon expressions and drawing several cartoon faces. Then they get to create a “Can-Toon”. Using a used and cleaned regular-sized food can, they cover it with bright colored backgrounds first. Then face parts are cut out and glued on. Yarn and markers finish the characters, and the can may be used as a pen & pencil holder.

NOV 11 – 15 • Students will create an interactive color oil pastel work that changes from day to night when you change your viewing angle. They’ll use their memory to draw their own home and yard, so it’s a personal piece. This also takes away any worries about content, so students can focus on the colors and different day and night versions of the scene. We’ll use this fun project to learn about viewpoints, lighting effects, 3D artwork, and interactive artwork,

NOV 4 – 8 Students create a fun and colorful poster announcing fall, using tape-resist and oil pastels for the lettering, and leaf reference for the picture.

OCT 28 – NOV 1
Students have a day full of fun and choosing their own subject matter. This encourages artists, who often say they don’t get to do what they want to. There are also 2 stations for learning-art activities.

OCTOBER 21 – 25 • The week before Halloween, we practice painting fun, simple faces in tempera paints, and then paint a face on a real pumpkin using grown-up acrylic paints. It’s also a great time for a party: have parents bring some drinks or snacks, and have students each bring a small pumpkin to paint. Bring the pumpkins in a small cardboard box to take it home while still wet!

October 14 – 18 • Students will learn that doing several variations of their art gives them a choice, which is often much better than going with your first idea. We’ll play-act that they are a boss. They’re also the boss of their art, and can move shapes around until they like a composition more. Watercolor and pastels are used to paint images of hand tools, and a shape-finding game is played, strengthening visual skills.

SEPTEMBER 30 – OCTOBER 4 • Artists enjoy drawing a still life that features plants, and then using watercolors to paint it. There is some review of shadows and highlights during the artwork time. After a break, the kids cut jungle-like shapes out of colored papers and use them to make a jungle rug collage. There is an extra project to create an oil pastel art of plants from the still life if there is enough time.

SEPTEMBER 19 – 23 • Students use drawing skills to create a large vase and flower collage with mixed media: Oil pastels, kraft paper, cutting, and glueing. Composition is worked on as they apply the shapes they’ve drawn and cut.

SEPTEMBER 16 – 20 • Students have fun with a playful subject, underscoring the idea that “the joy of an artist will be evident in their finished art”. The concept of Air Shapes is revisited. Students learn to draw on “both sides of the line“, and draw the air inside a vase handle. Oil pastels are used to finish in color, and there is a dance break too!

SEPTEMBER 9 – 13 • This is a great lesson for learning a basic concept for drawing accurately, but without the students getting bogged down in lesson concepts. When drawing it helps artists to be able to draw the air shapes (negative shapes) that are in-between other things. It doubles the information available for accurate drawing. A fence is used to plant the seed of this concept, and to make a striped colorful painting. Then we use it as a background for another project: a unique-looking black-line painting over it that looks like ink line art.

SEPT 2 – 6 • Balloons and clouds are used to teach shadows and highlights. First, the balloon pictures are painted with the “local color”, bright red. Then a darker red is added for a shadow on one side. A highlight is observed on a real balloon, so students can use real life to improve their artwork and make a highlight. Sponges are used to make clouds and cloud shadows in the background.

AUGUST 26 – 30 • Introduction to the idea of lines as edges, and oil pastel technique with mixing & blending. Students use a photo of a scotty dog bas-relief sculpture for reference, but it’s turned upside down. This allows it to be drawn more accurately because it’s hard for the mind to interpret. Instead of using known assumptions about what you’re seeing, your eyes have to look more closely.

AUG 19 – 23 • Students create 2 fun art projects that also reinforce important artistic insights: 1) veggie stamp paintings & 2) paper flag design. The stamping is fun and introduces pattern and color schemes. The paper flag design helps the student think about big shapes – the 2nd step in the 3 steps to accuracy.

MAY 13 – 17 • Our last class of the year has students going to an animal party. First, they use blank masks to pretend they are animals, then everyone finds reference and paints their mask to match a chosen animal. Pretend play and a game take up the middle of the class time, and then there is a marker drawing project of animals having a Summertime party. We have one extra class next week if you need it.

APRIL 27 – May 1 • Students enjoy working with two fun ways to create stars. Realistic star patterns are made by splattering white paint on a dark paper background, and expressive stars are made with thick paint and by copying Van Gogh’s Starry Night. If time, early finishers get to make a star logo for themselves.

APRIL 22 – 26 • In this lesson we’ll do several things backwards! Students begin by observing and using some recently learned skills. Then there is a negative-line mono print. They will re-draw flowers in marker outlines, and then use oil pastels to do the background first and leave the flowers blank. Finally they’ll finish in the flowers.

APRIL 15 – 19 • Students will use lots of layers of colored papers to create a wonderful landscape. Circles can be stacked for colorful clouds and hills.

APRIL 8 – 12 • To understand the basic idea of drawing from a viewpoint (perspective), artists need to learn how to look. Students are introduced to the ideas of viewpoints using a viewfinder tube (Frame-O-Scope). Then we introduce two artist’s tricks to show near and far. One is demonstrated with circle puppets, and shows how things look farther away if they are smaller, and the other is how things that are closer, are lower on the paper. It’s a great lesson of artistic discovery, and most kids are very excited with the work they do.

April 1 – 5 • Students will make an art sculpture by cutting and pasting to create a 3D stack of shapes and color. They’ll be using paper they’ve colored and drawing on themselves. They’ll also have time for a fun artist game today.

MARCH 25 – 29 • Students will use magazines and catalogs, as well as their own picture, to make a cut and paste collage. They will use lots of smaller pictures to create a new picture of themselves in a fun place they’d like to go.

MARCH 18 – 22 • Students will have tons of fun creating a full-body selfie in markers. Then they learn all about the skeleton and body proportions, with an interactive art project using oil pastels, markers, cut paper and interchangeable parts that reveal the bones in the body.

MAR 4 – 8 • Students learn about 2 important, yet different types of drawing: expressive work from memory, and more realistic work using observation. The main point is that these are both valid directions to take, but that they don’t tend to mix well in one piece of art. Other work involves layering oil pastels in a contest and then using the technique on an animal drawing they made earlier using observation.

FEB 26 – MAR 1 • After having total freedom of choice to create a watercolor painting, Students then get to choose even more fun art projects. Stations are set up around the room and young artists have lots of opportunities to create and explore new ideas. There is even a fun and active art game. It’s a very fulfilling day of project fun!

FEB 19 – 23 • Students will have fun making bouncy spiral snakes with their own designs by drawing on our printed pdf snake templates. Then everyone is introduced to clay with play-doh for a warmup, before moving into an 3D project of an animal that they’ll be able to take home next week.

FEBRUARY 12 – 16 • Young artists will have a blast learning how printmaking works and creating their own sets of images. Stations make it easy and keeps everyone moving as they draw ideas, make printing plates from styrofoam, then add ink, and print them onto paper. Then they start over again.

FEB 5 – 9 • Everyone loves elephants! Artists learn how to draw a cartoon version, which also helps them learn how to simplify. Then they will have a chance to draw and paint more realistically, and in the process learn how to mix blacks and grays.

Jan 29 – Feb 2 • Students learn how the concept of harmony applies to visual art just like music. A flower is drawn from reference and painted as a spectrum in watercolor for color-wheel flowers. The arrangement of the colors is used to show harmony, along with some games of harmony color designs.

JANUARY 22 – 26 • 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.

Jan 15 – 19 • Using some simple big shapes and line, artists will draw and paint a bird. There is a background done with streaked colors and then the bird is drawn, glued to the background, and painted to match. During part of the lesson, we discuss and learn about different viewpoints, showing a bird’s eye viewpoint, of course!

JAN 8 – 12 • After a warm up with artists’ choice, students learn how to make light swords with a glowing technique using oil pastels. The swords do battle with hot and cold colors. Then there is a super-fun table-mural game called, Color Wars, where children will learn more about what happens when hot and cold colors mix.

DECEMBER 18 – JANUARY 5 • Students will Students will learn about snowflakes, first drawing some snowflake designs, and then painting a large snowflake in tempera paint. They’ll end their lesson with a choice of working on some holiday cartoons or doing a pastel of lights at night.

DEC 11 – 15 • Students will continue our pet theme. First we’ll make prints using the cat yarn print blocks from last week, and then create dog drawings and paintings. We end the day inventing a fantastic dog house!

DEC 4 – 8
Students will make 3D ornaments out of cardboard and paint them. These will stand up on a table or hang on a tree and can follow non-Christmas themes if needed. Afterwards, they will make their own stamps and use them to create original wrapping paper.

Nov 27 – Dec 1 • Students will all bring candy to create a huge candy “store” that everyone can “shop” at for their houses. A half-gallon paperboard milk carton is cut in half to make the house, which is glued to a small cardboard base. Icing and candy cover the entire house! Kids love creating this holiday tradition.

NOV 6 – 10 • Students will continue with cartooning, and work on cartoon hands and feet. Then we move on to creating crazy creatures and silly monsters. It’s a fun day of cartoon art.

OCT 30 – NOV 3 • Students will have tons of fun learning the parts of cartoon faces and practicing how to put them all together. they’ll finish with a final cartoon in marker outlines and coloring with layers of oil pastels.

OCT 23 – 27 • Students have fun drawing leaves from photos, and using oil pastels to color them. Then a straw and blow technique is used to create ink tree branches. The last project is to draw a tree in pencil and then wet the paper. Watercolors are used to create a soft fall foliage work using warm colors that spread into the wet paper.

OCT 16 – 20 • Students will spend the whole day creating and working with lines: line inventing; color line art; charcoal line art; backwards line art (white on black paper); and a line art game.

Oct 2- 6 • Students are introduced to an important design element, The Most Important Spot, (emphasis). We hunt for shapes, using tracing paper to capture them from photos. Students will also work with warm vs. cool colors using oil pastels.

SEPT 25 – 29 • Students will have fun drawing and painting pigs in several projects. Simple shapes and symbols help us create pig cartoons with different expressions. More realistic pigs are drawn from photo reference, colors are mixed, and then they will paint the pig using tempera.

SEP 11 – 15 • Students will learn how different motions make different kinds of artwork. Today most of the work will be with line, and some with oil pastel, as we try color-dancing, and create black and white line paintings of frogs. There is also a quick review of air shapes.

SEP 4 – 8 • Students will learn about shapes that are made up of air, and are in-between other shapes, and how it helps to draw things if you look at these shapes in addition to solid shapes.

MAY 8 – 12 • For our final lesson of Year A, we’ll be making and decorating a big box party bus! It’s great fun and students learn to work together. Then everyone gets to redesign their school bus, and invent a mobile house bus for the summer.

APRIL 24 – 28 • After starting with a fun name guessing game, students adopt their color name for the day. Then there are 3 games. The first is a puzzle that reinforces looking for big shapes. Next is a color mixing challenge using paints. Finally, there is a creative crazy creature where artists invent a new creature from cartoon creature parts.

May 16 – 20 • Our extra class is all about cartoon animals. We use simple shapes to build characters and then apply some funny expressions. The last project is a one-page, 4-panel comic book they create on their own using printed templates. If time allows, they get to make a colorful cover for the comic “book”

Young artists will have a blast learning how printmaking works and creating their own sets of images. Stations make it easy and keeps everyone moving as they draw ideas, make printing plates from styrofoam, then add ink, and print them onto paper. Then they start over again.

Students will learn about shapes that are made up of air, and are in-between other shapes, and how it helps to draw things if you look at these shapes in addition to solid shapes.

Students begin by painting fireworks and thinking about summer fun. Then they move to creating colorful marker art using geometric grids as a starting guide.

Artists use warm & cool colored oil pastels in a fish drawing, working on movement and technique. The imagination is employed to invent a new idea – using household tools to create fish. They’ll finish the work using watercolors, and then use oil pastels to finish another earlier drawing.

MONTH • WEEK • This is a real lesson that you can use for free to check out the Art Instructor. Students learn how the concept of harmony applies to visual art just like music. A flower is drawn from reference and painted as a spectrum in watercolor for color-wheel flowers. The arrangement of the colors is used to show harmony, along with some games of harmony color designs.