More Spring Themed Art Lesson Plans and Video Guides for Classroom Teachers

In my previous post I wrote about the benefits of harnessing the arrival of Spring as a starting point for some great art lessons with your students. This post will further expand on those benefits and also align some specific pick-up-and-go comprehensive art lessons that you can use with your students today. Some lessons are step-by-step PDF guides while others are narrated video demonstrations. You can find one that suits you and your students, the best.

More Spring-Themed Art Lesson Plans and Ideas

Abstract Garden Quilts & 3D Spring Flowers

Spring flowers are a symbol of new beginnings and can be the perfect subject for a spring-themed art lesson. Have your students collect different types of flower pictures or take photos of flowers. Both of the following art lessons will build problem solving skills and also result in each student’s work being unique.

Abstract Garden Quilts  focuses on the art concept of ABSTRACTION for 2nd grade and up. Use oil pastels and paints. This is a fully narrated video tutorial that demonstrates all steps in real time. Stream the video lesson on your large screen and free yourself up to roam your classroom and support your students. This lesson plan focuses on:

• Break up and recompose photographs

• Extract basic shapes to compose an image

• Under-painting to create the garden mood

• Show depth in an artwork through layering shapes and using analogous colours

• Contrast warm and cool colours to create focal points

3D Spring Flowers is a 3D painted paper collage art project for grades 1-3. Includes a fully illustrated PDF teaching guide that demonstrates every step. Introduce students to the elements of SHAPE and FORM, & the principle of PROPORTION (sizes and location). 2 colour schemes are demonstrated in the guide. Students also learn about colour value and using stencils to create repetition. 

Spring Flowers 3D art project has built in choice for differentiation, while keeping the skills taught consistent across the class, to save your sanity.

Praise for SPRING FLOWERS: 

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ "did this with my first grade class. Took us about 4 art classes to complete. turned out so absolutely beautiful that they were displayed in our school foyer"

Butterflies and Bees Art works

Butterflies and bees are a common sight as spring arrives, and they make great subjects for a drawing lesson. Have your students study the different parts of these insects, including their wings, body, and antennae. This helps to create artworks with more understanding about the subject matter. 

Butterfly mobiles  

is a fully narrated video tutorial created for K-1st grade, that demonstrates all steps in real time. Stream the video lesson on your large screen and free yourself up to roam your classroom and support your students.

Benefits of using a video lesson:

• The lesson has already been tested

• All steps are viewable from start to finish

• Techniques are demonstrated

• Rewind and rewatch as many times as needed

• Narrated explanation adds depth to understanding art theories

• Its like having an art specialist in your classroom 

Bee Brave Art project for Back to School guides students to create values based artwork at the start of the new school year. Each student draws and paints a large flower design, symbolising learning growth in a happy classroom. Then add an observation drawing of a bee that representing themselves as the busy learner. Finally students incorporate a classroom value word of their choice, e.g. Bee Positive or Bee Kind. You will love the results and they can stay up on display all year as they remind students about the class expectations of a happy learning environment.

PRAISE FOR Bee Brave

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ "What a great back to school project. Great messages to go with this project and the students really got into it. I love the process of it and that if fits more than one grade level. Thanks!"

Blossom covered Spring Trees & Landscape Paintings

Spring trees and landscapes can be full of vibrant colours and interesting textures. Have your students study photographs of blossom covered trees and  landscapes and then create their own artworks using collage or a variety of colours and brushstrokes.

Bird Song Spring art lesson plan for BIRD SONGS COLLAGE suits Grades 2-4 introduces students to the wonderful media of paper collage. This comprehensive art project for grades 2-3, or older was inspired by the illustrations of popular children's picture books and the artworks of Henri Matisse.

• SHAPE - identify and use 2D shapes to compose artwork

• SPACE - Create space by layering shapes

• COLLAGE - gain experience and skill working with this medium

• STENCILS - gain experience and skill for making and working with stencils

This is a great art unit to combine with a Science inquiry focused on seasons (Spring) or animals (birds). For a literacy connection, collage picture books have been suggested as reference among other resource links, and a clear and comprehensive photo journal of each step of the process has been provided, along with student and teacher exemplars of work in progress and completed work.

This lesson plan focuses on:

Colour Value Landscapes is a project that can relate to plant life cycles and seasons, Sharing the Planet or How The World Works. Your students will love creating this unique and impactful art project that has a strong focus on the Element of Colour (Value) and the Colour Blocking painting technique. Learn about why as artists, we need to use multiple values in any hue and build painting skills with different paint brushes and tools.
COLOUR VALUE LANDSCAPES is a comprehensive visual art lesson plan for paint & oil pastel that will guide your students through creating artworks of trees on a hillside in a season of your choice, including spring. This lesson has tons of built in choice for differentiation

Spring Weather Art

Spring weather can be moody and unpredictable. Showers one minute and windy the next. Some great drawing and painting artworks can be created using the weather for inspiration. Combine with a poetry lesson, like writing Haikus about weather, and you’re onto a winner.

Rainy Days is great when you're teaching a unit on weather and needing an impactful Art Lesson that also helps to consolidate Science learning. Your students will love creating this bright art project with tons of built in choice for differentiation, while keeping the skills taught consistent across the class, to save your sanity. 

Take the guesswork out of teaching art, avoid the epic fails that result from not having the time to trial the lesson or media yourself before teaching it. I’ve done it all for you and trailed this lesson with my own students, aged 5-6, in 1st and 2nd grade.

Windy Weather is another great art project when you're teaching a unit on weather and needing an impactful Art Lesson that helps to consolidate Science concepts. Your students will love creating this fun art project about a kid with an umbrella, blown off their feet by the force of the wind. With an art focus on the principle of MOVEMENT, this lesson has tons of built in choice for differentiation. I’ve trailed this lesson with my own students, aged 6-8, in 2nd grade through 4th grade. 

PRAISE FOR WINDY WEATHER:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “This is a great project, my grade two students definitely found it challenging. We had to stop and replay the video several times. I found the guide pages very helpful.”

And finally...

Easter themes

As Easter falls into spring (Northern hemisphere), bunnies form another popular subject matter. These create a gorgeous wall display in your classroom, and students can add eggs and / or flowers to further embellish their display.

Fluffy Easter Bunnies is a comprehensive art lesson plan to guide your Easter art project in grades 1-3, using poster paints and sponge printing techniques. Includes a PDF teaching support document with printable drawing guides and display suggestions. This lesson comes with the instructional video that demonstrates every step, supporting students with creating texture in paint, using the element of SHAPE and the principle of PROPORTION. 3 versions (colour and bunny poses) demonstrated, to guide originality. Created with students aged 5, this lesson plan is aimed at early elementary but also includes an extension for older/ more capable students, and focuses on:

• the element of SHAPE concepts and principles of PROPORTION

• painting techniques (sponge painting)

• and fine motor skills (drawing, cutting, composing)

So as you can see, Spring brings many options for incorporating amazing art projects into your teaching days and your students will love you for introducing them to a range of art processes and creative options.
If you would like to know more about any of these lesson plans, click on any of the images or links to be taken directly to that lesson on TPT.

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Back 2 School - no fuss first week art centres

source - https://pixabay.com/photos/school-back-to-school-school-starts-4398499/

So how have your first couple of weeks back in your classrooms gone? Did all the prep you had done in your summer break pay off, and have you been able to make essential observations of, and connections with your students during these first weeks, to inform your planning and teaching going forward?

As a General classroom teacher of many years (and more recently a Visual Art specialist), I know how daunting the start of a new year can be.  These days I have as many new starts as I have classes that I teach. However, most specialist teachers have the added advantage that they see all the students, all year, so they can simply roll over their systems and expectations from year to year, with minor modifications and improvements. They already know most of their students needs and abilities through year-on-year observations and interactions.

My timetabling is a little different.

Timetable

I see most students for 1 term a year, and teach between 2-3 year levels in that term. I teach K-6.
The positives of this timetable is that I only teach around 1/3 of the school each term. This means remembering names and families, assessing and writing reports, and manage the work product and resources for 1/3 of the school rather that the whole school, all at once.

The drawback is that students get a solid burst of Visual Art for max. 18 x 45 min lessons in their term and very little for the rest of the year, unless they are independently motivated, join art clubs or attend private tutoring. They also forget the Art Space systems and routines or some may have changed since they last attended. I also need to re-evaluate what progress they have made since I last saw them almost a year ago.

For this reason, I set up exploration stations for the first week with juniors, teacher guided skill sessions for middle and teacher themes for senior primary students.

Year 1-2, Kindy and Year 0:
Depending on the size of the class, I introduce between 2-4 'open-ended' stations for these first lessons. Some of these change over the term based on the class interests and skills / media I want them to explore independently before I take a guided lesson. But most will stay out and available as exploration stations all term. This gives me opportunity from week 2, to start with a whole class skill builder session and students can peel off to familiar stations as they complete the skill. I can also pull out small groups as needed. But most importantly, I can make observations in that first week that will inform my planning going forward and build relationships with students through availability and communication that will support trust going forward.

Hand made, scented playdough

Chenille craft wire and polystyrene recycled from packaging

Stencils

Simple drawing guides

Modelling clay with image prompts

Wooden building blocks

Collage

Large format weaving

Year 3 and 4 are ready for more complex (teacher guided) skill builders that go over several lessons. The stations above will also be available to them, with some slightly levelled up if appropriate. Mostly, these stations are so open-ended that students create and explore at their own level anyway and develop through learning from each other as they explore collaboratively.
I like to focus on 3D skills at middle primary level and introduce papier-mache, clay and cardboard construction. Where possible (due to time constraints) the aim is for a teacher guided skill buildr to be followed by a student choice exploration with that media.
At Y3 the skill builders involved ceramic slab work and papier-mache pets. While the art techniques are teacher guided, there is differentiation built into the content and shapes built by the students. The decoration phase is also completely open to the students. The connecting transdisciplinary theme was Exploration.

Year 4 have a dedicated ceramic focus on complex figure building due to the time constraints in my timetable. Students create a cat through a guided skill builder session and this is followed up with a fully independent clay session where they build a self portrait and demonstrate their learning from the skill builder, while aiming for a unique and personally representational sculpture. They are also introduced to glazes. Due to the time consuming, messy and expensive nature of ceramics, I have strict protocol around using clay which becomes an independent media station in Year 5 and 6.

By Year 5 and 6, students are mostly independent but also more aware of their abilities and that of others in their group. In my experience, the more agency they have and the more unique their work, the less potential for direct comparisons and defeatism rarely rears its head. Exploration Stations are no longer just physical but also virtual, and they independently explore concepts of personal interest as related to Art. Here I start with a research theme: What are the main elements of art, choose 1 that you are interested in and create a piece of work that communicates your understandings to an audience.
We have an art show every 2 years and then this inquiry has the added constraint of forming part of a collaborative piece e.g. feathers on a large wing, flower in a large bouquet, house in a large village etc. Students also select a media of choice for 2D work to explore with this assignment.
Self-directed inquiry is easier at this level as these students all have iPads which they bring to art at every lesson. They are also expected to reflect on their learnings and thinking process is most lessons through the Seesaw app. These reflections inform their grade for the Responding to Art strand in IB PYP. All work product, complete or not, informs their grade for the Creating in Art strand in IB PYP.
Some samples of the assignment are below, on displayed in the art room for the term, then glued into their sketchbooks:

Exploring Colour

Exploring Form

Exploring Line

This assignment also re-establishes the expectations and routines in the art room. Year 5 and 6 then go onto their personal artwork based on their current inquiry unit. They ideate using the Design Thinking Process (DTP) for content, message, originality etc. in their skethcbooks before creating their final artwork.

The Design Thinking Process phases 1-3

The Design Thinking Process phases 4-6

 Their only constraint is the time-frame. They can pick any media from the following menus:

Some time ago, I wrote 2 resources for starting art/creativity/fine-motor exploration stations in your own classroom or art room. These it right in with the play-based philosophy too. These are available on both my TPT  and HML stores for $5 each. I just know that you will find exploration stations as wonderful as I do !

View this product on TPT and HML

View this product on TPT or HML

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Timea
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Flipping Media Centre Instructions

One media that I find myself repeatedly explaining are the coloured markers.
I made a short video for my students to watch prior to prototyping with it (trying it out).

You can watch it below:

It made a big improvement to the quality of work produced using this media, from what students were doing prior to watching the video.
Here are some samples of work by students from across the levels that chose to use it for their Wall / Wow Work.

Year 1 Feathers for the giant wing mural (collaboration)

Year 5 Shark - Sharing the Planet (conservation)

Y6 My favourite destination - How the World Works (systems)

Y6 My favourite destination - How the World Works (systems)

Year 2 Feather for the giant wing mural (collaboration)

Year 2 Feather for the giant wing mural (collaboration)

Y6 Prototype in sketchbook

When you find yourself repeatedly reviewing particular skills with a certain media, consider making a short demo video that you can play again and again to new groups of students  or for students to use independently for revising skills. Focus on the basics and maybe include 1-2 tricks but keep it short so that students don't get bored and lose interest.
Have you made any demo videos yet?
Would love to hear how you get on.


Thank you for stopping by,
With love, Te Aroha
Timea
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Learning environments - SPACE AND TIME (Part 1/9)

How does the learning environment enhance Creativity?

The theory and practice of Teaching for Artistic Behaviour (TAB) is based on the following 3 beliefs: 

• What do artists do? 
• The child is the artist. 
• The classroom is the child's studio. 

When you look around your classroom, what do you see?
Put yourself in the shoes of your students and examine the walls - how do they make you feel? are they helpful, inspirational, over-stimulating?

Examine the workspaces/centres - are these inviting, exciting, confusing? Would you know what to do, how to start or clean up? Can you find what you need? Is the lay out clear or confusing?

Furthermore, put yourself in the shoes of someone who is shy or timid, exuberant, easily overstimulated, reliant or independent. Now how does your room support their learning styles?

And how can our classroom - the child's studio - enhance Creative Thinking


Continuing with my literature review of
Lai, E. R., Yarbro, J., DiCerbo, K., & de Geest, E. (2018). Skills for Today: What We Know about Teaching and Assessing Creativity. London: Pearson.


LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS 

Davies et al. (2013) identified the following 9 environmental factors as supporting the development of creative skills in students: 

• flexible use of space and time (1/9)
• availability of appropriate materials (2/9)
• working outside the classroom/school (3/9)
• playful or games-based approaches with a degree of learner autonomy (4/9)
• respectful relationships between teachers and learners (5/9)
• opportunities for peer collaboration (6/9)
• partnerships with outside agencies (7/9)
• awareness of learners’ needs (8/9)
• and non-prescriptive planning (9/9)

FLEXIBLE USE OF SPACE AND TIME (1/9)
Having flexible use of space within the classroom or studio can promote students’ creativity and imagination to support the growth of ideas (Bancroft, Fawcett, & Hay, 2008; Jeffrey, 2006, cited in Davies et al., 2013).
For example, not using specifically themed role-play areas and props in early-year settings gave more freedom for the students’ imagination (Bancroft et al., 2008).
Flexible seating options or learning spaces in classrooms has gained a lot of attention from teachers in recent times.

This news article on making a change can be accessed here (source of image above)
goodbye-desks-hastings-classrooms-add-flexible-learning-spaces  

The internet (instagram, Pinterest) is filled with surreal images of beautiful furnishings and compliant students in clean open spaces that are more beautifully decorated than most people's homes. However the reality is a little different.

https://pixabay.com/en/photos/classroom/

While the tide is shifting away from rows of desks and students working individually, to embody a more relaxed, homely atmosphere where students collaborate and drive their own inquiries, most classrooms are tired looking with scuffed furnishings and hand-me-down accessories. Teachers around the world spend their personal income to decorate and supply their classrooms, creating alternative seating by purchasing gym balls and upholstering crates in colourful fabrics or painting wall murals and decorating notice boards. Lack of available finance drives teachers to think creatively and problem solve around such obstacles, driven by the passion to provide the the best possible environments for their students.

Based on research, I paired or grouped the long art benches in my classroom. I also requested for 3 to have had the legs cut down and this created a large communal work area that caters for students as young as Kindy.

Students select their seats but know that they will be asked to reselect if their own choice was not working for them on that day.
The only determiner to seating is that the room is divided into wet media / dry media zones based on the proximity to sinks. Supplies are stored in a central location,  students collect and take these to their chosen work area in the zone. This way the use of tables can change based on the year level, club group or media in play.

Work tables with Y1 Art Club - Liquid Tempera Paint

Work tables with Y0 Class - Painting ceramic fish with liquid water colours (NZ dye)

Work tables with Y3/4 enrichment collaborative - wax and water colour (dye) resist

Work tables with Y6 PYP Exhibition Elective group - pour and flow abstract work with diluted acrylics

Work tables with Y5 drawing media

This set of 2 work tables is permanently set up as a ceramic centre due to the dust and media specific requirements

The mat area also converts to a construction zone for cardboard sculpture and papier mache armature making. I moved a large bookcase containing construction material to border the mat on one side. The fibre centre storage is also in this area. Along side of the mat is a green screen wall that can cater for digital options.

Mat area with students creating PM armatures

The green screen wall displaying some of the students photographs - alongside the mat zone

I also made an inspiration wall for each zone with images of past student work at multiple levels, doubling as a galley.

Digital Zone

Drawing Zone

Building Zone

Painting Zone

Using TIME flexibly can also play a role in the creativity of young students who need time for immersion in a creative activity (Burnard, Craft, & Cremin, 2006).

Everyone has a personal learning rate that is affected by interest, ability to sustain focus, emotional well-being, skill level, learning faculties, etc. Time limits can add to stress and impact the quality and purpose of the learning.  Teachers have known this for some time as is evident in the multiple 'Early Finisher' option lists flicking around on social media. This is merely a panacea and not a good enough solution.

https://www.google.com/search?q=early+finishers&client=firefox-b-ab&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwislpHEgZPcAhXJm5QKHfmyDUUQsAQIOQ&biw=1341&bih=671

Consider your students when planning your programme, being cognisant of the fact that students require variable time frames. Extend the core learning intention (understanding that this is all that some will manage) into tendrils of personal inquiry that faster students can select to follow, independently or in collaborative groups. Leave this open ended and self directed for exploration.

One time factor consideration I recently used in my classroom was to...

Vary the paper size:
Y6 (aged 10-11) art students participated in a real community commission this past term. Our client (the developer of a local rail transport hub in Auckland) required artwork about dream destinations that they could print onto square tiles to decorate a wall.
Knowing that students took different amounts of time to initially plan and then to create their work (due to confidence level, idea generation, media chosen etc), I gave them the choice between 2 paper sizes.  For students with intricate and detailed work, time consuming media or techniques and those that started much later, I recommended the smaller paper size but still left the final decision to them. Even so, due to events out of our hands (school wide events like sport that cancelled lessons or student illness), a few students still did not complete but many more did with this one small modification. And completed to a high standard. Every piece is original, designed by the student and media is self selected. Because the work is to be scanned, size is irrelevant to the client but made a huge difference to the students. And I think you'll agree that quality was maintained.

small paper - water colour pencils

small paper - water colour paint and india ink

small paper - coloured pencils

LARGE paper - acrylic paint

LARGE paper - acrylic paint

LARGE paper - water colour pencils

Two tendril extensions I used with this same level was...

Providing a 'hook' centre to follow-on from the core learning intention.

Due to the work above requiring to be 2D, students didn't have the option to create in 3D. As students started to approach completion, I set up a clay centre and strategically displayed work in progress from other year groups, the uptake by students to create with this media was overwhelming.
All I required was for them to watch this short video by The Clay Teacher (see below) as an entry ticket into the centre so that I didn't get tied into supporting exclusively in this area beyond checking in and conferencing on designs as I would anyway.
I shared the link to this little YouTube video with them as a reminder about clay basics (they have used clay the year before) and said they could make anything they wanted with 2 technical criteria - must have a base so that it doesn't topple and follow the joining rules for clay.

I do expand on the joining rules with the Acronym - SWWS (scratch, wet, wiggle, scrape/smooth) to minimise bits falling off as this can be very disheartening for little people.

I also made my own clay flipped video for my younger students based on the coffee cups idea by art teacher, Cassie Stephens.

Some students chose to do further research independently while others created from their imagination.
Here are a few of the pieces that they chose to made.

Other students chose to return to the Prototyping step in the Design Thinking Process that we use and explored other media that they had not used on their work but had seen results achieved by others.
These included, wet and dry media as well as digital media.

Students choosing Osmo for drawing (improves observational skills for accuracy in drawing)

Students as teachers working with a drawing app.

I hope that these ideas and reflections help you to consider the impact of that your learning spaces and time factors have on Creative Thinking, as you plan future learning intentions.


Please continue to my next post on Learning Environments and read about:

AVAILABILITY OF APPROPRIATE MATERIALS (2/9)



With Love
Timea

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