montessori drawing lessons Archives

June 13, 2020December 10, 2021

Drawing and Painting Water | Montessori Art Activities

This blog post is a part of a three-month series: Montessori Art in the Natural World: Kids Nature Journal Color Lessons. This series is about growing kids’ knowledge about the natural world by taking them outside their home or classroom and challenging them to create focused art, based on the nature around them. Every aspect of nature—seasons, layers of the earth’s soil, energy, rocks and minerals, fossils, landforms, water, flora, fauna, the atmosphere—can all be represented and expressed through art lessons. The water texture art techniques in this blog will help your students learn how to paint water to use in their nature art projects. Drawing and painting water is an excellent way to teach students more about nature and our world’s waters!

With 71 percent of the earth’s surface being covered with water, chances are, your kids will encounter drawing or painting some kind of water feature in their artworks or biome field notes. Luckily, there are a ton of water texture techniques that can be explored for learning about our ocean salt water, fresh water, frozen ice formations, and water within our atmosphere. Focusing on our planet’s natural water systems is also a great way to connect them to nature! Another fun way to engage students in studying zoology is to draw or paint whales, sharks, rainbow fish, crocodiles, eels, and algae in the water they live in.

Teaching students a unique way to express water images will make learning about the science aspects of lessons a lot more fun. Drawing and painting water textures open up childrens’ curiosities and will lead to interesting and enriching conversations within your Montessori classroom.

Fun Water Art Learning Prompts:

You can continue to guide your students’ interests and curiosities by exploring the questions:

Why is the ocean blue?
Why do some parts of the ocean (or large lakes) look darker or lighter? (This is also a great question to help them explore color values and color tones!)
What is a coastline?
What causes waves in the ocean? Why aren’t there waves in lakes?
How much water covers our planet?
Why is the largest body of water salty?
What kind of animals live in the different depths of the ocean?
How do freshwater biomes and saltwater biomes differ?
How are sea mammals and fish different?
Why is water so important to human life?
How can we protect our planet’s water systems?

how we montessori art lessons painting and drawing

Learning About Nature By Painting Water Texture

Kids learn by connecting information through the process of expressing, which leads to meaningful learning. As a teacher, you can lead students through many engaging water texture art lessons which will help them make their artworks unique and personal. Rather than students slapping down blue paint to represent oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, or streams, they can look closer to the natural patterns found in water and try to replicate the movements and textures in their artworks.

Water texture drawing or painting can be explored in primary and elementary grades. Younger students will need more hands-on assistance and need to work process-based, giving them more time to discover and explore. Lower and upper elementary children will be able to do the projects completely independently by following demonstrations and steps. There are many techniques to create water texture art with interesting lines and patterns, such as:

Crayon wax resist
Salt sprinkled over watercolor
Bubble wrap
Painting yarn to create line textures

Where to Start: Bubble Wrap Water Painting Montessori Art Activity

Drawing and Painting Water | Montessori Art Activities

There are so many ways to create water texture drawings and paintings, but this technique is one of my favorites! It’s so much fun for kids and easy to do too. (Plus, it helps you recycle any bubble wrap you get from packages!)

One Step Further: Download My Montessori Nature Journal Checklist

how to teach kids montessori art lessons

If you’re lucky enough to live by a body of water you can take your students to, I highly encourage you to have students make and record their observations in their nature journals. (For information and instructions on how to create a nature art journal, click here.)

montessori arts and crafts, painting and drawing

To download the checklist for FREE, click here.

I created this Outdoor Nature Journal Checklist to help you guide your students in their observations and recordings to make sure they’re following scientific principles and standards. This will help ensure your students are including data that helps them implement both scientific and artistic principles during their expedition. Print it out or save it on your phone so you have it with you the next time you lead your students outside.

montessori painting lessons and curriculum

A Short Cut Just for You

I like painting water texture activities because it opens up a whole world of painting for kids. It shows them how you can paint with tools other than fingers or paintbrushes! However, it’s essential that kids do learn paintbrushes and brushstroke techniques to help them develop their painting skills.

My Kids Painting Practice & Process Curriculum has 57 master lessons that take kids from setting up a paint station and holding a brush all the way to creating beautiful nature landscapes and painting different types of animals! Each lesson is featured as part of a sequence and includes all the information—materials, demonstration technique, and direct and indirect aims—you need to properly present the activity to your students.

To purchase the curriculum, click here.

January 10, 2019February 1, 2020

The Value of Art Journaling for Kids, Montessori Activities

I’ve shared with you the importance of stimulating positive art talk in your Montessori classroom. It’s one of the easiest ways to get students interested in art. Once they’ve been allowed to explore their creativity through visual art, chances are, they’re going to be hooked and want to learn so much more. I’ve see it happen so many times! One of the best ways to keep them captivated, allow them to explore even more, and track their progress is through art journaling.

What I love about art journaling is that there’s no minimum talent or skill required—students of any age can benefit. All you really need is a journal, some simple art materials, and the willingness to get creative and have some fun.

What is Art Journaling?

An art journal is a book kept by artists as a visual—sometimes verbal—log of their thoughts, ideas, and creations. Art journaling the same concept as a written journal, but it combines writing with art and visual aspects. It’s a way for children to record their ideas and observations or respond to information they’ve learned with simple drawings and basic written descriptions.

It also gives them a space to explore. With art journaling, anything goes! Every style, medium, and technique can be used.

Art making is also powerful and therapeutic. Journaling gives students a healthy outlet to express their feelings and work through their emotions. For example, communicating through doodles can be much easier for children than talking.

How Art Journals Works

There’s no right or wrong way to do art journaling because they are personal to each artist! Students can use it to try out new techniques, document what happened to them that day or week, or artistically express the different emotions or issues they’re experiencing.

Students can keep their art journals with them or you can store them in a specific place on your art shelf or in a cabinet where they can grab them when they’re feeling creative. They can use the art supplies you put out on your art shelf to fill in the pages of their journal.

For the most part, journaling is an independent project and doesn’t require any lessons to complete. However, if you want to, you can provide simple prompts to inspire them; some examples may be: elaborate doodling, depicting poems, illustrating specific emotions, and creating patterned pages.

Make & Decorate Your Own Art Journal

Making an art journal is simple, all you really need is the journal itself—preferably filled with blank, un-lined pages.

Composition notebooks—although lined—usually cost about $1 or $2 each, and bulk pasts can be even cheaper. But I know purchasing a journal for each child in your class can still add up…so I’m offering you two solutions to cut down on costs.

1. Ask parents to donate journals. You’ll be surprised at how many parents will be willing to donate a few notebooks for your classroom.

2. Create a mini art journal out of plain paper:

Take 4 sheets of 8 1/2 x 11 plain white copy paper
Cut sheets in half (8 1/2 x 5 1/2), then fold in half into a mini booklet
Bind loose pages with a rubber band or stitch together (along the fold)
Stitching Instructions: get a thumb tack and press to make 3 holes along the fold; bind pages using a simple string stitch (watch video below).

Once you have your journal figured out, give students the opportunity to decorate their notebooks. If they’ll be using their own individual books make sure they put their names on them. Then put out a few basic art supplies (markers, stickers, glue, scissors, colored paper, beads, ribbons, etc.) and let them have fun. These will more than likely be the same supplies they’ll use to decorate the inside of their journals as well.

If your students choose to share their art journals with you, make sure you offer them supportive and nurturing language.

You never know…creating and encouraging your students to keep art journals might inspire you to start one yourself!

Learn more about teaching kids art lessons

Want more information on the types of techniques your students can handle or ideas for art projects outside of journals? Sign up for my absolutely FREE mini course, Phases of Art Development Guides & Art Project Ideas. It’s a quick guide to what your students are capable of and what to teach them at each age. They’re bite-sized videos that have proven helpful to many other Montessori teachers and they’ll give you a solid foundation to begin teaching art in your classroom!

Sign-up to receive video course & Montessori art teaching e-newsletter.

The Phases of Art Development is a quick digital course that explains how art making can help students develop their creativity, fine-motor skills, and focus. More importantly, I share what types of projects students at every age are capable of completing safely, and without making a mess.

Best of all—it’s free! To sign up for the course, click here.

Of course, if you want to stay up-to-date on more teaching tips and art project ideas, make sure you sign up for my newsletter!

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November 29, 2018February 1, 2020

Teaching Montessori Art, Creative Making vs. Copy Making

By Spramani Elaun

In my twenty years of observing and teaching children of all ages to draw and paint, I’ve discovered the best ways for teaching art without stifling their creative spirit. My unique teaching method breaks down instruction into two balanced approaches: creative-mode and copy-mode.

When art instruction is balanced using these two methods, a child can develop skilled fine art motor movements, plus conceptualize original imaginative ideas. Understanding how to teach creative making and copy making is simple. I cover it in more detail in my book, Introducing Visual Arts to Montessori Classrooms, but here’s a quick guide to give you a foundation.

Creative Making

Creative mode is how children first learn to create art. In creative mode, you can introduce projects and demonstrate a medium, but refrain from giving students a point of reference or image to copy. The child creates art by exploring the medium and conjuring up their own creative images from their own imaginations, thoughts, and ideas.

Introducing Creative Making to Students

Creative making is all about giving students the freedom to explore. You can show kids examples of projects using similar mediums and technique but give them space to come up with their own ideas of images, colors, and even different techniques to finishing their artworks.

Young children should start their art experience in creative mode, then move on to copy mode learning and observations in the upper grades.

Copy Making

Copy mode refers to a systematic, step-by-step art instruction. When students are older they are able to learn to make art by mimicking or copying a visual image by following a series of steps, resulting in a similar finished project. In fine art adult classes, students learn to draw or paint by copying what they see an in image and studying its perspective renderings of line, form, light, value and composition.

Introducing Copy Making to Students

Start out by having kids copy a design step-by-step. For example, you can teach kids how to draw a butterfly in just three to four simple, systematic steps and most students will create similar butterfly shapes. You can then transition children into creative-mode thinking, by allowing them to color or paint their designs however they choose—tapping into their own individual creativity they harnessed at a younger age. The goal is to give kids the foundation to draw an outline of a basic butterfly shape (in copy mode) and the freedom to think creatively (in creative mode).

The Benefits of Creative Making & Copy Making

Copy-mode drawing can help develop muscles in students’ eyes, hands, and memories. Copying geometric or organic shapes can help students achieve similar shapes they might desire in their own creative drawings or designs. Limited copy-mode and step-by-step drawing lessons should be introduced to children in elementary grades.

Creative-mode supports children in developing ideas from their own imaginations. It gives kids free range to conjure up their own ideas; this also supports the artistic process. When children learn to create from their own ideas, they conceptualize original artworks through imagination, planning, and finally, constructing. These are the qualities of a creative innovator. Because young children have great imaginations, it’s ideal for children to being making art this way.

Teach by Balancing Both Methods of Instruction

For students to benefit the most, you should be balancing fun projects that utilize creative-making opportunities with occasional skill-building, copy-making techniques. Using both methods of instruction will support art literacy by guiding students through the artistic process. Children have the opportunity to create and imagine their own ideas and design, then explore and construct their art projects, and finally express what they create with words or written descriptions about their process.

If you require kids to follow too many step-by-step instructions and do not allow for any creative freedom, it can stifle their creativity or love for making art. Additionally, a child’s visual perception and fine-motor development develops slowly over childhood. Some children may not be developmentally or cognitively ready to copy at an early age and this can negatively affect their self-esteem and ability to think creatively on their own. Some copy-mode instruction can be introduced in early elementary, but should be directed more towards upper elementary grades.

All kids need artistic inspiration to serve as a springboard for drawing and painting ideas to get them started. You should always give kids some point of reference to copy initially, then allow their own ideas or designs to flourish. It’s really difficult for many kids to sit down and think of something to create off the top of their head without any guidance at all, especially if they do not have much practice in visual arts just yet. This is why it’s so essential for copy and creative making to work hand in hand! Simple copy-mode lessons can be used as inspiration. Just remember, copy making and step-by-step instructions should be options, not requirements.

If you would like to learn more about teaching art in your Montessori classroom, register for my next Art Teaching Blueprint training. I break down these concepts in simple, easily digestible lessons (that you can go through at your own pace) and help you start using these methods in your classroom. Trust me, so many Montessori teachers like you have been able to implement visual arts in their lessons and always come back to tell me how much their students love it and are benefiting from it. I want this for you and your students too! So, click here to register today.