If you maintain a classroom “Word Wall” of art vocabulary, ask your students to illustrate that wall. Provide small papers (4″ x 4,” or whatever size works with your existing setup) and encourage them to make a visual representation of each word. After all, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Even better, give them their first graphic design experience with a client, by offering to produce Word Wall illustrations for another teacher in your building. 10. Allow your students some tech time.

This surrealist party game can be easily implemented in the art room. Demonstrate how to fold the paper to keep a portion of the image “a secret” and let your artists collaborate to create some humorous and creative outcomes! If you’ve never played before, the Art Institute of Chicago Department of Museum Education has a great PDF with directions for both the written and drawn versions of the game available here. 7. Start an Artist Trading Card project in your school. Ask kids to recall a favorite project from your curriculum. Ask them to create step-by-step examples of that project (or the associated technique) for younger students. Provide them with a large piece of construction paper, poster board, or butcher paper to use as a project board to display the instructional aids they create. 16. Let students create work for real world clients. Below you will find some drawing prompt activity sheets. Completed drawings can also be used as creative writing prompts.

More Animals

Provide your students with sketchbooks. If you are on a budget, they can just make them by stapling together copy paper. Then, explore the different drawing prompts and challenges that the internet has to offer. Here are two available on AOE. Create a comic strip template and ask students to produce comics to fulfill a prompt, or leave it open-ended to let them explore their own topics. Hang funny or inventive student examples on the board for the class to enjoy. 18. Build the classroom drawing library. Invest in some post it notes or provide pre-cut paper scraps and a stapler. Challenge your student to develop their sequential art skills and persistence by producing some old school flip books. 28. Enlist students to help take classroom photos.

As art teachers, we get dozens of local and regional drawing contest invitations a year. Most of these do not fit in our curriculum and thus hit the trash can. Instead, keep them all in a folder and let your early finishers select contests of interest. Competitive kids love entering for some artist recognition! Can you spark creative thinking in kids by having them finish a picture made from random lines? Absolutely!Last year I found a huge ream of old, yellowing paper headed to the dumpster. It was pre-printed with 1-inch by 1-inch squares. I brought it to the art room and forgot about it until a second grader asked if he could use it to make his own version of Candy Land. This started a game board making craze in the art room. The imaginative drawing students produced with a self-chosen theme was amazing! 2. Designate a “Picture Book of the Day.”

Although you probably maintained a classroom library all year long, kids thrive on novelty. Select a book from your library to be the “Picture Book of the Day,” and feature it as an early finisher activity. Scarcity and novelty will make this book a commodity in your classroom. Plan ahead and relate it to the current lesson to add to their art knowledge. 3. Set up a sensory station. Maintain a list of contemporary artists who might be interesting to your students. Allow students to do a little internet research and write a letter to an artist who inspires them. Encourage them to share some of their own work with that artist. Who knows, they may get a response! 26. Develop creative thinking with “Brainstorming Boggle.” One of my youngest daughter’s favorite things to do is to watch YouTube drawing videos and follow along with them. Her current go-to channel is Art for Kids Hub. This graphic designer Dad and his kids offer awesome, easy to follow drawing tutorials, perfect for your kiddos! Try How to Draw Books Below you will find a collection of comics that are incomplete. Look closely at the pictures, then figure out what you need to add to complete the comic!

Keep up to date with your professional development

Are you looking for a fun way to work with your students on the visual art elements of line, shape, and space? Then these five ‘Finish the Drawing’ worksheets are for you! Figural, or visual, creativity often requires pattern recognition—when someone sees something in an abstract image. In a way, these figures are a problem, and children will seek out ways to “solve” them by turning them into something more familiar and potentially creative. These visual divergent thinking tasks ask participants to come up with as many ideas for what the images could represent, which has been shown to predict creative potential. Weaving can be a time-consuming task, so why not use it as an early finisher activity? Introduce and practice the skills as a class, getting students started on the project. Then, pause the process and explain it will be an ongoing activity all year long. Students can return to the project time and time again throughout the year. Over time, they will develop a larger project, using those spare minutes of instructional time. You could also consider setting up a large loom students can work on collaboratively. 22. Encourage collaboration. Provide students with play dough and task them with practicing those foundational ceramic hand-building skills such as coil rolling, creating a pinch pot, or forming a slab. They will gain experience and your classroom will smell great!