Lesson Plans – Words & Pictures

K

Kindergarten - A Tree

Visual Arts Lesson

Summary: Students learn to recognize warm and cool colors, then they create their own pictures of trees.

K

Kindergarten - African Folklore

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: Students read a variety of African folktales and use a modern Yoruba mask to inspire their own stories.

K

Kindergarten - American Flag

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: Students learn the symbolism of the American flag and look at the details in two paintings. Then, they write letters to U.S. soldiers.

K

Summary: Students observe and describe details about a book and artwork related to trees and Arbor Day. They paint their own pictures of trees and, using what they have learned about descriptions and adjectives, write their own thoughts about their artwork.

2

Grade 2 - Are You My Mother? An Opinion Writing Unit

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: In this lesson, we dive deep into the Langston Hughes poem, "Mother to Son," exploring the poem's meaning through writing and art.

2

Grade 2 - Art, Landforms and Weather

Science and Social Studies Lesson

Summary: Artists use many techniques to show us different kinds of landforms and weather. We study some paintings from different artists and read some stories that depict a variety of geological features and weather conditions.

1

Grade 1 - Artists Shape Our World!

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: Artists use many techniques to share their thoughts with us. In this extended writing unit, we identify specific elements of artworks to write about. We go beyond describing what we see and write our own opinion pieces to share with each other.

2

Grade 2 - Bridge Narratives

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: Students learn about root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Using artwork as an inspiration, they write stories to showcase what they've learned.

2

Grade 2 - Cinderella Stories

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: Fables and folktales from around the world often share similar themes. In this lesson, we read Cinderella stories from around the world and look at artwork that might tell similar stories as well.

1

Grade 1 - Cities Around the World

Visual Arts Lesson

Summary: In this printmaking lesson, students will work as a group to create a city. Each student will create their own building, which will be printed together to form a complete cityscape.

K

Kindergarten - Clay Pinch Pots with Coils

Visual Arts Lesson

Summary: Students use clay for the first time to create small clay pinch pots. They start with a ball of clay and make a hole using their thumb. Then they pinch around the outside edge to shape their pot. After the pots are dried and fired the students paint them.

K

Kindergarten - Colorful Frog

Visual Arts Lesson

Summary: After comparing and contrasting the colors, patterns, and textures in artwork and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, students create their own illustrations of a frog.

K

Kindergarten - Earth Day

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: Students use poetry and artwork to discuss environmental themes and learn about Earth Day, making posters to celebrate the holiday.

1

Grade 1 - Fictional Narratives

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: Artwork sometimes shows us a specific moment from a story. In this lesson, we imagine what happened before that moment and afterward. We work through the writing process with the stories we come up with, from planning to publishing and sharing.

K

Kindergarten - Getting to Know Japan

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: Students learn about life in Japan through videos, songs, stories, and artwork.

K

Kindergarten - Jack and Jill, Rhythm and Rhyme

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: Some of our favorite poems include rhyming words. In this lesson, we look for rhymes, setting, and characters in "Jack and Jill."

2

Grade 2 - Jonkonnu Inspired Textile Designs

Visual Arts Lesson

Summary: In this lesson, we read a story of a famous artist and his study of people in the 1800’s. Then, we use that as an inspiration to design our own costumes for a Jonkonnu parade.

K

Kindergarten - Life Cycle of Butterflies

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: In this science-infused lesson, students learn about how butterflies grow and explain their life cycle in words and pictures.

1

Grade 1 - Life Lessons

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: Works of art, like books, often tell us a good story. In this lesson, we identify and write about obstacles that characters encounter in written stories or that we might imagine encountering in a painting.

K

Kindergarten - Lines and Landscapes

Visual Arts Lesson

Summary: We explore how artists use different kinds of lines together and then create our own collages that use lines we've cut ourselves.

1

Grade 1 - Living Things Are Connected

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: How are living things connected? We explore how artists show the connections between living things and write short informational pieces about works of art that help us understand these connections.

1

Grade 1 - Looking at Landscapes

Visual Arts Lesson

Summary: There are many ways to think about artwork. In this lesson, we practice sorting images by genre. Then, we create our own landscape drawings of places that we know.

2

Grade 2 - Man’s Best Friend

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: Adjectives can help us describe our best friends, be they human, or be they dogs. In this lesson, we take a look at how artists and writers depict the friendships between characters of different species.

1

Grade 1 - Mixing and Matching!

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: In this lesson, we showcase what we've learned about artwork this year. In groups, we sort images of artwork by different features and prepare a presentation to the whole class about why we sorted the artworks the way we did.

K

Kindergarten - Neighborhoods: Comparing Urban and Rural

English Language Arts Lesson

Visual Arts Lesson

Summary: Stories can inspire great art. In this lesson, we read The Gigantic Turnip, by Alexei Tolstoy and use it as inspiration for our own drawings.

2

Grade 2 - Season Poems

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: The world of poetry is full of new and interesting words. We explore some of these words in this lesson and make connections between poems and works of art.

2

Grade 2 - Self Portrait: The Five W’s

Visual Arts Lesson

Summary: In this lesson, we use The Five W's to help add details to self portraits we've drawn.

1

Grade 1 - Self Portraits of the Past, Present and Future

Visual Arts Lesson

English Language Arts Lesson

Summary: The Five W’s—who, what, where, when, and why—can help us focus our explorations of artwork. In this lesson, we practice using the question words with texts and images.

– Browse the Lesson Plans –