Watch this online video modeling an outdoor activity for your students. Building an elf or fairy house is becoming a popularly recommended “nature play” activity, especially for young children. Research shows unstructured time in nature increases cognitive, creative, psychical, and emotional development in children. It also increases children’s connection to nature and their likelihood of holding conservation values as an adult.

This lesson serves as a review for line, shape, color, and pattern for all students. The lesson also reinforces these concepts in english for ESL students. All students participate in speaking, writing and creating activities. Also, students are introduced to the NC Museum of Art through a virtual field trip.

Students will learn the primary colors, mixing primary colors for secondary, how to create basic geometric shapes from lines, experience a mixed media project and follow the style and technique of a famous painter (Piet Mondrian) in this lesson.

This lesson integrates Modern Art and Physical Education by having students act out the movements and emotions depicted within the paintings, The Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh, The Scream, by Edvard Munch, and Number 1 (Lavender Mist) by Jackson Pollock. Students will be asked to "become" the shapes, the colors, or the paintbrush, and to explore the possibilities within the selected canvases.

The NC Kids' Exploration Journals are a fun educational tool to help youth explore their communities and natural surroundings! Each journal contains: 18 multidisciplinary activities with guided prompts, 6 lined journal pages for recording observations and reflections, and 4 blank pages for individual creativity.

The digital versions of the journal are designed to be printed out for students either as individual activities or in its entirety so that they can explore their school yard, local park, or own backyard. Though designed for 1st - 5th-graders, older audiences may enjoy them too! They are also available in both English and Spanish languages.

While supplies last, hard copies of the journals are currently available for free to teachers by contacting karen.ipock@ncdcr.gov.

This lesson will focus on using found & recycled objects to create a three-dimensional narrative landscape. Essential Question: How can we re-create a place we have seen?

Students will improve visualization skills through role play, texture identification, and creating an original work of art depicting their own families. They will also discuss connections between the painting and their own lives.

This free website provides more than 600 adaptable lesson plans written by teachers in collaboration with the Denver Art Museum for more than 130 objects from the museums world-class art collection. Lesson plans and resources focus on inspiring students to think and problem-solve creatively. Organized in an easy way so that teachers can pick the topic they would like to explore or enhance, then use works of art to teach that subject.

High resolution images are included. Museum visits are not necessary to implement lesson plans. Includes professional and student development tools such as teacher workshops and webinars, virtual classroom courses, career videos, educator blogs and creativity tools. Easy for teachers in language arts, social studies and visual arts to provide a curriculum rooted in the arts while also meeting 21st Century Skills.