Primary students are a creative group of children who often let their imagination take them to new and inventive places. One of the best outlets for these young, innovative minds is art projects. Students can let their ideas shine when teachers support them by planning and implementing fun art projects in their lessons.
1. Cool and Warm Color Trees
Incorporate these warm and cool color trees with your 1st-5th Grade students in your lesson about color theory. Students will make these trees come to life as they learn to tell the difference, sort, and identify cool from warm colors.
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2. Creative Coloring
Your young learners will enjoy using multiple crayons to achieve this special coloring effect. They can experiment with different types of lines with crayons. A teacher’s tip is to tape the crayons together for easy handling for tiny hands. This effect is made with lots of lines.
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3. Abstract Art
Using just a few common items, your student can learn about abstract art by designing an abstract background inspired by Piet Mondrian. A discussion about different types of shapes would be beneficial prior to beginning this craft.
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4. Watercolor Fish
A fun art lesson for students of many ages is to create an underwater scene. Using watercolors, children will paint a blue water background. They can also cut out and decorate their own fish to glue on their piece of art. A fish template can help struggling students. This is a fun painting lesson for students of all ages. They can also try drawing the fish with oil pastels.
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5. Line Pictures
The possibilities are endless with these construction paper strips. Students can build and design different scenes using wavy, straight, and curved lines. The preparation on the teacher’s side is minimal for the amount of time this activity would take to complete.
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6. Jelly Fish Paper Plate Craft
Using just paper plates, yarn, and tissue paper, children can make these adorable jellyfish works of art. They can also add googley eyes to them or make their own! They can make different colored tissue paper or make a pattern with yarn.
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7. Sun and Moon
This Sun and Moon duality craft is the perfect way to showcase students’ knowledge of cool and warm colors. Having the two different types of colors allows them to contrast against each other, which makes this assignment pop!
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8. Alphabet Beading
Lacing alphabet beads onto yarn or string can strengthen the children’s fine motor skills. You can let them spell their own names, the word of the day, or any other words they are working on. You can buy inexpensive beads to make this project happen on more than one occasion.
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9. Paper Caterpillar Craft
Your children can use this cute lesson idea to work on their fine motor skills of rolling paper into short tubes. The students can get creative with their animal habitat or home. They can use different colors of paper to make multiple caterpillars!
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10. Color Wheel Umbrella
Enjoy your rainy day by having the students make color wheel umbrellas. This activity would be a great assessment to gather data about if students can recognize basic colors. They can get creative with their backgrounds as well!
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11. Crazy Circles
Students can go crazy for circles. They will draw circles with crayons repeatedly using a zigzag motion. Having them use contrasting colors or creating a theme can bring this project to the next level. Students will enjoy this color circle art.
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12. Nature Collage
Mix leaves with crayons in this fun project for your young second-grade learners. This collage is a great way to learn about the drying out process as students dry their leaves prior to putting this collage together.
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13. Sunflower Craft
This craft utilizes bright colors in the best way. The perfect way to celebrate autumn is by getting the children to create these sunny sunflowers with oil pastels and construction paper. This is the perfect lesson for spring!
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14. Emotion Painting
This craft is an excellent addition and support to any lesson about emotional regulation or self-regulation strategies. Students will use different paint colors to depict different feelings based on how they associate them. This could also be extended to be a portrait drawing lesson.
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15. Lady Bug Addition
Mixing math and art have never been so fun! Students will enjoy learning simple second-grade math with these bug addition sentences. You can tailor the equations to be as simple or as complex as you like depending on your learner.
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16. Tissue Paper Earth
Celebrate Earth Day or add to your Environmentalism unit by getting the students to work on this project using blue tissue paper and green construction. The teacher or educational assistant can pre-cut the tissue paper or you can have the students work on their scissor skills.
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17. Pumpkin Pie Craft
Your 1st graders or 2nd graders can celebrate Thanksgiving by making this pumpkin pie slice craft. Students can take this activity further by using different color paper for different pie flavors. You can challenge them to make their own flavors!
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18. Moving Bear Cub
Kick-off winter or the first snowfall of the season by making this moveable polar bear cub craft with your students. Using the template on white cardstock, your students can cut out the individual pieces of the bear and assemble them to create this cuddly craft.
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19. PopArt
Andy Warhol is the awesome lesson inspiration for this craft. Students can use an image from popular culture or they can choose their own image to create a repeating sequence with. Don’t forget to remind them about the bright colors!
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20. Paper Bunny
This adorable craft can be easily achieved by using a bunny template. Students can celebrate Easter or the start of the spring season by crafting with these bunnies. They can even glue on a picture of themselves for added fun. These springtime bunnies would look fantastic on a greeting card!
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21. Tissue Paper Snail
This colorful little creature will bring the students’ imaginations to life. They will enjoy watching the snail’s shell come together with one piece of tissue paper at a time. They could create patterns or do a random sequence of colors. This activity is a beautiful display of color.
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22. Pumpkin Person
Whether it’s a unit about gourds or Halloween, this pumpkin person will fit right in. The students will enjoy creating the accordion-style arms and legs for this activity and they will get very creative with drawing the face of their character. Your 2nd-grade art students will have a blast! Hang up multiple creations to create a class pumpkin farm or multiple pumpkin patches.
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23. Finger Painting with Monet
Claude Monet is the inspiration behind this simple finger painting work of art. Your young learner will finger paint with a variety of colors to create the watercolor look that Monet is famous for. The best part is – the project looks complex when it is completed! They could even try using this technique to create a landscape painting, which would teach them where to position the middle ground.
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24. Black Line Art
The bold, black lines that are featured in this project make the colors pop and stand out. Students will learn about different geometric shapes and can have fun filling in each section in their unique way. This is a fun lesson that can be incorporated into your next math unit.
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25. Mosaic Fish
This low-prep and inexpensive activity lets students create a simple underwater scene. The squares can be pre-cut to save time or if you have students who struggle with using scissors. This project is a great example of fish mosaics/art.
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26. Textured Fall Leaves
This activity is a fantastic 2nd-grade art project because it can be extended over two periods or over multiple days. Taking the kids on a nature walk prior to this activity is a great way to gather materials and get them to plan their projects with intent. These will create a leaf or colorful flower background.
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27. Color Mixing Sheets
These worksheets allow for a visual representation of the relationship of the colors in the rainbow. Students can experiment with adding primary colors together to make secondary colors. This activity supports children to learn about color mixing in a hands-on way.
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28. Abstract Art with Arthur Dove
In this activity, students look for inspiration in nature and then use a blank white paper as their abstract canvas. They can look at the shapes and colors in their subject and find new ways to express what they see. The emphasis here is on the feeling that the final picture evokes, and not necessarily the lines or colors.
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29. Chromatography Flowers
Bring some science into your art lesson with this cool project. Using pipe cleaners and white coffee filters, make some flowers. Then, put the “stems” into a vase of water and food coloring. Wait for a little bit, and the color climbs up the pipe cleaner to give the “flowers” a tie-dyed look. Experiment with different times and colors!
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30. Historic Petroglyphs
History comes alive with this play-dough or clay craft! Give students some rudimentary carving tools, such as popsicle sticks, toothpicks, and/or spoons. Then, have them make ancient pictographs in playdough or clay, focusing on the techniques they use for different shapes and textures.
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31. Celebrating Different Cultures
For this 2nd grade art project, a white paper becomes a placemat. Tell students that they are celebrating an important day in their culture, and they need to decorate their “placemat” to represent the holiday. Offer a variety of media, such as paint, construction paper, scissors and glue, and markers. Set a time limit, and have students present their piece to the class (or a partner) when time is up.
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32. Stained Glass from Melted Crayon
This project is a bit involved because it involved grating old crayons and ironing the final result. However, it’s worth it to see the lovely colors of homemade “stained glass” playing across the classroom windows! Students should be encouraged to look at the colors and shapes as they design, and to predict how the heat applied will change or alter their original design.
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33. Origami!
Kids love making 3-D paper creations, and it’s a great low-prep project for 2nd graders. Origami also helps students practice fine motor skills and following instructions, so it’s an art project that will benefit their other studies, as well.
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34. Tiny Rothko Cardboard Canvases
Kids can learn about color and form by painting cardboard or cardstock paper in a Rothko style. It’s an easy project that only requires some paint and a surface, plus some instruction and an explanation of Rothko. It’s also a great introduction to “painting as an experience.”
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35. Build Community with Circle Painting
The circle painting movement is all about creating simple and beautiful art together. It’s a means of bringing students together while also helping to alleviate the stress of school and everyday life. Painting circles as a group is an excellent way to decompress at the end of the testing season or a busy semester.
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36. Mini-Me Self Portraits
This project focuses on collaboration, and the end result is a huge mural of tiny self-portraits from all of your 2nd grade students. For a more interesting mural, have students do monochrome pictures and give a different color to each class or group.
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37. Dandelions from a Dish Brush
This project uses black paper as the background for white-painted dandelions. Using a scrub brush, stamp the “heads” of the dandelions onto the black paper about halfway up. Then, with mixed media and glue, fill in the stems and surrounding scene. For example, use blue paper for the clouds and green string for the stems.
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38. Weaving With Cardboard Circles
You can teach your students about the textile and yarn medium with this crafty project. Using a cardboard circle as the loom, give students lots of yarn options to weave a circular design. Make sure to have lots of different colors and textures on hand for them to experiment with!
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39. Cityscape Collages
In this introduction to mixed media, students use upcycled and found paper to create layered collages. Focus on the layering technique, which is not only an excellent technique for collages but also lays the groundwork for digital artwork and photo editing.
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40. Oil and Water and Colors
This art and science experiment focuses on blending colors and density. Students add droplets of food coloring to a clear container with oil and water and watch as the colors float and bob in the different densities.
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41. Upcycled Paper Art
Students start by making a background from strips of colorful pictures cut out of old magazines. Then, they cut a silhouette from black paper and lay it on top of the colorful collage.
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42. Chalk Art for the Ceiling
With this project, you’ll be left with amazing ceiling tiles that will really make your classroom or hallway pop! Students use sidewalk chalk and a brush with water to make butterflies on the ceiling tiles. Once they’ve dried, you have big, colorful butterflies to hang all over the school.
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43. Exploring Life Cycles
This project combines art and science to help reinforce the concepts of life cycles and form. Encourage students to use the worksheets to make realistic-looking animals. Then, have them arrange the steps so that the form of the layout reflects the life cycle properly.
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44. Clay Leaves
Take students outside in the fall to find some leaves that inspire them. Then, after each student has found the perfect leaf, roll out some clay and have the kids cut out the right shape of their leaf. Once the clay is dry, give them fall colors to decorate the leaf just right.
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45. Graffiti Names
This is a personalized art project that can also be connected to literature and pop culture. First, give a quick overview of different graffiti styles. Then, after a quick tutorial on lettering, have students write and decorate their names like graffiti tags.
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Conclusion
Whether you are an Art Teacher looking for ideas to fill your rotational block or a classroom teacher who needs some ideas, this list has a variety of creative choices for your class. Art can be a fun and engaging way to enhance a lesson in a different subject or be just as exciting on its own.
Students can learn about many artists from history and many concepts of art through doing these activities. You can also customize these projects to suit the materials you have on hand and your students’ skill levels. Your students will learn a lot and have so much fun doing it!
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