Elementary Art Projects & Creative Lessons for Kids

Welcome to Art is Basic, a blog full of elementary art lessons, easy art projects, and teaching ideas for K-5 classrooms. Browse hundreds of engaging activities designed to inspire young artists.

A group of small, handcrafted snowmen made from socks, decorated with buttons, scarves, and colorful hats serve as charming winter decorations.

More Snowmen!

I had another craft session of making snowmen after school yesterday. Here are the ones we made. You can see a full tutorial here.

December 14, 2011
1

Stacked artistic paper cards with colorful numbers, letters, and symbols in purple, blue, and green on a table, ideal for engaging 2nd-grade students in creative activities.

Collograph Art Project for Kids – Printmaking with Letters

2nd grade Collographs: We read about the art of Jasper Johns. He used everyday, ordinary images and created art so people would view them in a new way. We made a collograph printing plate using letters and numbers…

December 14, 2011
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Colorful square mirror with a red ribbon handle, decorated with various patterns and bright colors.

Picture Frame

Today we made picture frame ornaments with the 3rd graders. First, I cut pieces of thin cardboard into square shapes. Then, I cut tooling foil slightly larger than the cardboard squares. The kids folded their tooling foil around…

December 12, 2011
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Handcrafted patch featuring a red unicorn, embroidered green text "Enough pink already," and initials "AC" in red at the bottom.

Another project from our middle school art teacher

Once in a while I will share with you some projects that the other teacher in our school is doing. This one is so cool I had to take pictures for you. She had her 7th/8th graders embroider…

December 10, 2011
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Sock Snowmen

I had my first after school holiday crafts class yesterday. I had 14 kids with me making snowmen. You can see the tutorial here. Here are our finished snowmen!

December 7, 2011
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Be Inspired!

Art teachers: Do you take time out of your busy week to make your own artwork? Do you make it a priority? Even though I’m not creating gigantic masterpieces, I really try to squeeze in some of my…

December 5, 2011

Child's drawing of a person with the text "I LOVE U" and "I LOVE BIRDS," featuring flowers, a bee, and the name "Ariel," showcasing 1st Grade creativity.

Finished Printed Faces: 1st Grade

In this previous blog post, I showed you how we started our printed faces project. We finished our printed faces this week. The kids colored in the faces with markers or crayons. Then, they used rubber stamp letters…

December 3, 2011
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Colorful handmade rattle with red and blue feathers, decorated with drawings and symbols on an orange paper mache circle.

Paper mache Rattles- Kindergarten

The kindergartners made paper mache rattles after learning about Native American rattles. We viewed a Powerpoint about the rattles used in Native American ceremonies. The students made their own rattle which could be used for music and dancing. …

December 1, 2011
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Drawing of two figures walking hand-in-hand toward a large sun, with rays extending outward, on a light blue page.

ATCs

Artist Trading Cards are a fun “extra” project. These trading cards can be given to a friend or taped in your sketchbook. These kids used shape stencils, markers, colored pencils and shape rubber stamps to make theirs. I…

November 30, 2011
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Childlike drawing of a person in swimwear on a beach with a blue ocean and flying seagulls in the background.

Beach Paintings

To make these fun beach paintings, we started off with a mixture of blue paints and the kids used forks to scrape wave lines on them. Then, we used sea sponges to sponge prints shades of sand colors…

November 25, 2011
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A child's black ink drawing of a smiling face with spiky hair, triangular nose, and crossed lines for eyes on a piece of cardboard.

Face Prints with Cardboard–1st Grade

This week the 1st graders started making printed pictures of faces. 1. Cut strips of cardboard in varying widths.2. Place small paper plates with black paint on tables. Give each child a piece of paper. Demonstrate how you…

November 23, 2011
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Handmade 3D diorama of small figures, trees, a pond, and animal habitats on a table. Ideal for 3rd grade projects.

3rd grade Animal Habitats..

November 20, 2011

A Pointillism painting of a river, tree, green landscape, and a small boat under a clouded blue sky.

Pointillist Trees- third/fourth grade

We learned about the artist Georges Seurat by reading Scholastic Art magazine. Students identified and described Pointillist paintings. They created a Pointillist painting of trees showing dimension and form by color mixing. Step 1: Introduce the work of…

November 18, 2011
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Sock Snowman

Here is an easy, no-sew snowman that my after school art class is going to make. I’m so excited to try it with the kids and of course I will post pictures to show you their results. 1. …

November 17, 2011
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Child’s watercolor painting of a vibrant green frog on a blue background with red spots, saying "smak" in a speech bubble. It could be leaping off a lilypad in the whimsical style of Monet.

Frogs on a Lilypad with Monet– 1st grade

In Art class, the 1st graders looked at Claude Monet’s artwork, especially his paintings of ponds. Using a variety of painting techniques the 1st graders painted a pond with watercolors. Frogs were drawn with crayons and markers.…

November 17, 2011