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Easy Ways to Introduce Art for a New School Year

Oregon art lessons at school.
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This upcoming school year is an exciting opportunity to help students with their creative development. As children return to the classroom, introducing art at school in all its many forms can inspire a lifelong love for the creative arts. Whether you’re exploring painting, illustration, sculpture or printmaking, there are numerous ways to engage students’ interests and talents. Let’s look at some effective ways to incorporate art into your lesson plans.

Accessible Art Strategies for the Start of the School Year

Whether you’re planning a dedicated art class or want to integrate creativity into other lessons, parents and teachers have many options for encouraging children at the start of the school year. The following strategies will set the tone for a productive year of artistic development.

Develop an Arts-Integrated Curriculum

An arts-integrated curriculum aims to incorporate artistic processes in a range of subjects. For example, learning about shapes and angles in math class or creating a solar system model in science class can integrate art in a way that enhances the lesson. In many cases, adding a creative visual element helps reinforce the information and make it more memorable.

Create an Art Journal

The start of the school year is an ideal time to begin a new art journal that children can add to over the following months. This approach helps track development and can clearly show children how much they’ve progressed by the end of the year. By setting a goal to update the journal each day, a child is learning (and reinforcing) a good creative habit.

Design a Mixed Media Project

A mixed media project is a worthwhile task to start at the beginning of the school year. Children can develop a simple base layer by using the essential art supplies every young artist needs. Over the following weeks and months they can add new media elements – watercolors, stencils, fabric, buttons and beads and so on – to enhance the complexity of the piece.

Create a Visual Art History Timeline

Learning about the history of art, the lives of great artists and the pioneers of new styles is a crucial part of an arts education. While it takes time to cover the many movements and works that define important periods, you can introduce a visual timeline at the start of the year and add to it as lessons progress.

Set Goals for the Year

Setting new personal and educational goals is an effective way to maintain focus and track progress. An art project can teach the value of starting a task and seeing it through to the end – it’s just one of the reasons why kids need art. By setting art-related goals, students develop responsibility, time management and other vital skills.

Free Art Lessons for School-Aged Children

At Golden Road Arts, we offer a selection of art resources that encourage children’s creative development at school. We help parents and teachers by developing art guides and hosting events in Oregon. Watch free art lessons today.

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