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Art Appreciation

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I love teaching my students about famous artists!  They get so excited to learn about new artists every month, and it makes me so happy when they remember the artists they've learned about months or even years later. I create my K-8 Art curriculum by first planning what art concepts and skills each grade level should be learning. I then consider which great artists from the past and present will help demonstrate those age-appropriate concepts and skills. Every class from Kindergarten through 8th grade learns about a different "Artist of the Month" every month.  I designate one "Art Appreciation" day each month to focus on art history and these artists.   I use PowerPoints to teach all grades about these artists.  Each artist PowerPoint includes a short student-friendly biography of the artist and several slides of their artwork. To help them understand and remember the artist,  Kindergarten and 1st grade students write the artist's name and create a little

Cubism Drawings

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  After studying artist Pablo Picasso, 6th grade students had their hand at creating their own Cubism drawings. Students chose their own subject matter and practiced different ink shading techniques to transform their drawings into the Cubism style. We learned about iconic artist Pablo Picasso using this PowerPoint and Art Lesson . The PowerPoint reviews all his styles, from his early works and Blue Period to Cubism and his later works. Cubism is a fascinating style of art that revolutionized 20th century art. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassembled in an abstracted form. Instead of depicting objects from a single viewpoint, the artist shows the subject from several viewpoints at the same time for a more authentic representation of the subject. This is a complex style of art to wrap your head around. More advanced high school students may be able to grasp how to actually draw an object from different perspectives like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque did. For