Art Lesson Plan Form

Art-a-Baloo ART LESSON PLAN is extremely important to the Art-a-Baloo program:

• It gives the PTO and school administrators an account of what the program is doing
• That same accounting helps back and re-enforce budgets requests, helps support budget increase inquires too!
• It facilitate in supply and inventory issues
• It helps re-create the 'art experience' for other students, in other classes, for years to come.
• and lastly, it gives our visitors an idea of what the children are learning with the program and why it is so beneficial.    

The Art Lesson Plan  is located in the PTO office.  Please turn it in by emailing it to Artabaloo@gmail.com, or leave it in the Art-a-Baloo Folder in the PTO office and notifying the Art Docent Leaders it's there.  Also please be sure to notify Art Docents Leaders if you have NOT taken pictures of the projects, and email pictures if you have.

ART LESSON PLAN

(This portion of the Lesson Plan hangs in the wall as an Art Gallery Description)

Title of Lesson:  This will be the “Blog Title”

Docent:

Grade:

Teacher:

Date:

Medium:  Main Product used...colored pencils, oil pastels, water color...etc.

Reason for Lesson:  A brief description of principle of art (or element of art ( is being taught...what is the goal.  example:  Lesson was designed to create an understanding of   line and space, using the artwork from the Master Matisse.

Lessons should include one of the Elements of Art: Color, Line, Shape, Form, Texture and Space, especially for the primary-age students.  For the intermediate-age students, lessons may be more advanced studying the Principles of Art: Movement, Unity, Harmony, Variety, Balance, Contract, Proportion, Pattern and Rhythm.

(This portion of the Lesson Plan is for program accountability)

Label:  Color, Line, Shape, Form, Texture and Space or Movement, Unity, Harmony, Variety, Balance, Contract, Proportion, Pattern and Rhythm

Prep Time:  What about time does to take to be project-ready for the classroom

Preparation prior to lesson:  What do you do to prepare for the lesson?

Class Time:  What is the time it took to teach the project, start to finish.  If it was a multi-day project, please let us know.

Materials:  List every item used for the lesson...this is important for assignment reproduction and really important for supply closet and program budgeting.

Instructions to Lead Lesson:  Step by step instructions, or a brief summary.  If you used

PC’s Powerpoint or Mac’s Keynote presentations and you wish to share, they may be added to the blog...however, older versions prior to 2010 do not transfer.

Credit:  Was it an Art Attack lesson from our Library, or an internet, or some other...let’s give credit to those who deserve it.

ArtaBaloo Supply Room Inventory List

If you are creating a supply room at your school, or are part of our program, the following inventory list may be helpful to get your started.  Are if you were wondering what is available for immediate use...here you go!:

• Bristol Paper
• Watercolor Paper 
• Variety of Colored Tempera Paint
• Construction Paper of all colors (located in School Workroom)
• Variety of Colored Butcher Paper (located in School Workroom)
• Oil Pastels
• Chalk Pastels
• Drawing Chalk
• Color Pencils
• Water Color Markers
• Sponges
• Foam Brushes
• Paint Brush - Small, Medium, Large
• Water Dishes, and water syringes - for easy water filling.
• Black Ink Pads
• Pipe Cleaners (green and small amounts of others)
• Tissue Paper
• Permanent Color Markers
• Liquid Water Color Paint
• Dixie Cups 
• Black Sharpies
• Charcoal
• Water Color Paints Strips of Eight Colors
• Mirrors (great for Self Portrait assignments)

Since budgets are tight at our school, we ask docents to use Water Color paper sparingly, meaning don't use on every single class project.   It is the most expensive product on hand and should be saved for special projects.  Leadership suggests is to use it only once per classroom per year.

When Docents have completed their lesson, putting materials back is so important so that the next docent will be able to locate materials quickly.  And please, please keep supplies as clean as possible.  Picking up of jar that is dirty with left over paint if not a treat for anyone...thank you :)

Have a great day creating something artfully!!

26 Reasons Why Art is Good for Kids

1. Art develops both sides of the brain.
2. Children who make art read better and do better in math and science.
3. Allows children to express themselves and learn who they are as individuals.
4. Art builds self-esteem and is empowering: "look what I made!"
5. Art is something is share: it builds connections to friends, family and community.
6. Art teaches risk taking and learning from one's mistakes.
7. Art teaches the use and care of tools, and builds relationship to the material world.
8. Art develops hand and eye coordination and higher order thinking skills.
9. art teaches open-ended thinking and creates an environment of questions rather than answers.  In art there are no right or wrong answers.
10. Art teaches children that there can be more than more solution to the same problem.
11. Art nurtures the human soul. 
12. 33% of children are visual learners.
13. Art develops focus and increases attention
14. Art provides a common ground to reach across racial stereotypes, social barriers, and prejudices. An artist's palette has many different colors.
15. Art steps out of the limitations of time and allows a child to be present in the moment.
16. Art is Beautiful!
17. Art opens the heart and mind to possibilities.
18. Art is a way to see and understand the world around us.
19. When art is integrated with other curriculum areas, children become more engaged in the learning process.
20. Children can share and reflect on their art to learn about themselves, each other, and the world they live in.
21. Art teaches one to explore playfully without a preconceived plan, learning from accidents, being surprised, getting beyond the fear of mistakes.
22. Art awaken the imagination and allows the magic to flow.
23. Art creates direct observational skills, learning to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, seeing things that otherwise would be missed.
24. The earliest evidence we have of humanity is through sculptures, rock carvings, and cave paintings.
25. Art develops instincts.
26. A Van Gogh painting sold for $83 million dollars.

Art Docent Tips

FOR ALL GRADES

• Check in with Office - Be sure to sign in and wear your name tag
• Maximize Set-up Time - Consider scheduling sessions just after the kids get back from recess, PE, or library; this will allow extra time for set-up 
• Walk into Class Completely Prepared - Pre-mix, pre-sort, pre-cut, pre-prep...be ready to go when you walk into class.  Your time is short and you don't want spend lesson time prepping.
• Try the Project at Home - Gauge how long project will take at home.  Will it meet the time allotted?

Defining the Elements of Art

Color – The perceived wavelength of light reflected by an object.  Color has three properties: hue, value and intensity.

Line - The path of a moving point, a mark made by a tool or instrument across a surface.  Lines can be straight curved or angular and lines can be thick, thin, light, dark, smooth, rough, solid or broken.

Shape – objects that have two dimensions; length and heights. Shapes are made when lines connect and can be geometric, organic or free-form.

Form – objects that have three dimensions; length, width, and depth. Forms are geometric organic or free-form.

Texture – refers to how surfaces of objects look or feel.  Textures can be visual or tactile.

Space- This is the area around below, above and within an object.  Positive space is the space occupied by shapes or forms in two or three dimensional artwork.  Negative space is the unoccupied or empty space over around, below and within shapes or forms in two or three dimensional artwork.

After the Lesson - Communicating

Prepare the Lesson Description to hang with the art on the wall.  This is a great tool for teachers, students and parents to learn about the lesson.

Complete the Lesson Brief then attach it to your Lesson Summary and place it in the Art-A-Baloo Crew (AABC) coordinator's box in the PTO office. Lesson briefs and lesson summary's can be emailed to the AABC Coordinator or Assistant Coordinator.

The AABC Coordinator or Assistant will take a photo of the work in the gallery.    All the information will then be posted on this blog for all to see and share!

Finally, after each lesson one or two pieces of art will be selected to display at Mead High Schools Annual EYE on Art Program. The student will be notified of this decision and we will help in celebrating this achievement.

Possible Approaches in Presenting the Reproductions

 

• Write the name of the artist and painting on the board.  Help the children with the pronunciations. You may wish to sometimes have them give the title ideas of their own and then give them the title after the discussion.
• Ask what feeling the colors convey…pleasure, joy, sadness, anger, noise, etc.  And why.
• Relate painting to the senses: rough, smooth, sharp, cold, hot, loud, etc.
• Using the sensual as well as the emotional and intellectual response to things in the painting, relate to their everyday feelings about themselves and people and environment.
• Don’t forget rhythm, color movement, line movement.
• Point out that an idea or feeling is the beginning of the artist’s creation; the artist then develops this idea or felling through the different medias and processes of art.
• Do not overlook the technical aspects of creating a work of art, the media, materials, techniques.  Children want to know ‘how’ things are done.
• Relate the painting to history.
• Relate the painting to characteristics of the particular period in art.
• Discuss the artist’s background and habits, etc.
• If a picture has obvious narrative or dramatic content, discuss this first as it will be most important to the children…but never stop the discussion with more verbal storytelling.  Make it visual.
• In discussing abstract works, you may find helpful the idea of looking for ‘expressive personality: i.e., the idea that paintings, like people, have personalities.
• Do not use questions that are too vague and open; for example, “what do you think of this picture? Is of no help.  Instead, having been told by a child that a particular painting gives them a spooky feeling, a good follow-up might be to ask the group to find all the various factors which create the spookiness.
• Use music or poetry to set a mood that corresponds to your picture.
• Help the children find colors, lines, or shapes that are repeated.
• Always try to bring in a real object that is shown in the picture.  A scarf, hat, lantern, raincoat, bowl, candle, letter, piece of fruit, etc., will often be a great way to introduce a picture.  “The artist for this month has one of these in his/her picture…”
• Sometimes our eyes complete lines that are left unfinished by the artist…give the children an opportunity to ‘find’ these imaginary lines.  Ask them to come forward and show the class.
• Artist use many different kinds of brush strokes to ‘fill in’ area of color.  Help them to see lines that are hurried, detailed, thick, wavy, wide, tiny, precise, etc.
• Challenge the children to continuously look and find new information.

Resource:  Northshore School District

Ideas for Discussing Prints

The children will remember the pictures more if they participate in the discussion each time.  Use these questions as a guide in preparing your presentation.  Don’t ask dead end questions…pose question that open up new avenues of discovery.

  

1.                  Compare art objects.  As you look at these two paintings, do they look the same? What makes them look different?

2.            Is it good to have pictures or statues that look different? Why?

3.            Can you tell us about something in our town, or your yard or school that does not look nice? How does it make you feel when you see something that does not look nice?  What could you and I do to make out town look better?

4.           Here is rock. Is it pleasing to look at? To feel? Is it a work of art? Why? Art most things around us art objects in a way?

5.           Here is a weed.  What do you see in the weed? Does it look strong or weak, friendly or unfriendly? Does it look you or old? What makes it look that way?

6.           Why do businessmen hire artists rather than non artists to design automobiles, billboards, and cereal boxes?

7.           Art beautiful things good for us? Are they always good for us? Do beautiful things always cost a great deal of money?

8.           Here is Gainsborough’s Blue Boy.  Do you believe that this painting affected boys and girls in Gainsborough’s day in the same way that it affects you? Why? Did this boy dress like this everyday? How would he dress today?

9.            Is it worthwhile for people to make art objects that deal with the same subject matter? Why?

10.         Is it worthwhile for one artist to employ the same style as another artist? Why?

11.         In how many different ways can are be valuable to use? Do we use art skills when we select our clothing? Or write our name on a paper?

12.         If two average citizens happen to disagree about the worth of an art object, is it possible to determine if one is more nearly correct than the other?

13.        Why was this color chosen? Do you know that warm colors always attract attention and seem to ‘jump out’ at us?

14.         Did the artist use the ’whole space’ for the picture? Whey did the artist include this object (for this one) in the picture?

15.          Is the main theme of this picture a person, place or thing?

16.        How often did the artist repeat this color? This diagonal line? This brush texture? Did you know that all great pictures have repetition of line, color, or form?

17.         If you could change one thing about this picture, what would it be?

          

Principles of Art: Description

Balance – the principle of organization that refers to arranging elements equally in a work of art.  There are two kinds of balance: Formal (also called symmetrical) and information (also called asymmetrical).

Contrast – a difference in value, color or texture that achieves emphasis or dominance.

Proportion - the comparison of elements one to another in terms of their properties of size, quality , and degree of emphasis.

Pattern – the repetitions of art elements or the combination of elements in an organized manner.

Rhythm – a principle of organization that indicates a type of movement in art or design, reinforced by repeated shapes, lines or color.

Emphasis – a means by which an artist uses contrasting colors, shapes, or value to draw attention to certain areas or objects in a work of art.

Unity – a principle of organization that relates to the sense of oneness or wholeness in a work of art.

Variety – is the principle of design that creates interest in an artwork by stressing the difference or contrast of the elements such as : line, shape, color or texture.

Getting Started as a Docent Art Teacher

Once your school has decided to incorporate a Art Docent Program, establish guidelines that will keep the program on track and also create the expectations for both the parent docent and the teacher.  Following is some recommendations:

• Meet with Other Class Docents - At our school, docent parents have selected multiple teachers to work with off the full list of teachers grouped together by grade.  Docents may pick just one teacher to work with, but often pick two or three.  If you chose to work in the same grade level, then you may repeat the coursework in all classes you are working in. Decide how you, and the other class docents, would like to work together in a class. Docents can work in teams or individually.  For a successful program, our goal as docents is to provide a lesson once a month. If you work individually you can alternate months between you and another parent docent(s), spending less time in the classroom (if lack of time is a consideration).  However, the team approach gives you more one on one time with the kids and is a lot more fun for everyone involved.

• Meet with your Teacher  - Schedule all lessons through the teacher directly.  Ask about curriculum integration and anything else they may need from you.  Also, discuss the technology available to you.  What kind of projector and materials are needed for display. What supplies do students have that could be useful in determining your project; example, do they all have their own marker and colored pencils?  Determine the best times for the lessons and schedule them.  Scheduling can be tough if you don't be proactive about it. Most teachers will want you to offer to them specific times versus a teacher asking a docent.  Therefore, be proactive by offering a teacher 2 to 3 options for the month that work for you (and your class docent team), and then coordinate calendars.   

IMPORTANT!!!  ONCE YOU KNOW THE DATES, PLEASE PUT THEM ON THE CALENDAR IN THE SUPPLY ROOM SO THERE IS NOT OVERLAP AND RISK OF RUNNING OUT OF SUPPLIES. 

• Prep your Supplies - Get everything ready ahead of your lesson time, so you are ready to distribute to the class when you walk in.  Pre-mix, pre-sort, pre-cut, pre-prep...be ready.  Your time is short and you can not spend any of the lesson time still prepping.  Also, to help save value lesson time, have kids in the classroom to help you pass out materials if you don't have a class docent partner.

• Teaching the Lesson - Find artist's bio, photos and artwork and display them on the screen in the classroom, or print them out and project them.    Once you have your lesson determined, use this general guideline when in the classroom:

1. Distribute supplies to all children in the class.  (Again, have kids in the classroom to help you pass out materials if you don't have a class docent partner)
2. Introduce an artist and show samples of their work.  (5 to 15 minutes).  Use interesting details (like Van Gogh slicing his ear off)
3. Describe the lesson you have for them and how it ties in to the artist
4. Walk them through the project, step by step.  If you are able to, bring in some music, it is a great tool for creating artists.
5. Keep lessons between 1 to 2 hours.  The teacher will tell you how much time you have.
6. As students finish, have them mount their own work on colored paper sized to fit the art and sign it.  Decide with the teacher if the art can be left to dry in a specific area.  If students don't finish before the class is over, decide with the teacher if there is time for the student to finish  their project indendentely later in the day. 
7. Arrange with the teacher (or with other class room 'helpers') to 'hang' the art in the art gallery (hallway outside of the classroom) along with the LESSON DESCRIPTION sheet!  This IS the most important part of the lesson.  As students, teachers and parents walk by the display they can easily reference the lesson and concepts learned. 

•  Retreive all docent supplies - Round up all supplies at the end of the lesson and return them back to the storage area.

• Back-up plan - If you are unable to teach a scheduled lesson, find another docent that could cover for you.  The kids really look forward to these lessons and we certainly don't want to disappoint!