The Ultimate Montessori Art Lesson Guide is the perfect resource for Montessori teachers who want to learn how to prepare art lessons that keep students engaged and that follow art literacy standards.
If you are new to Montessori art—or even just art in general—it may feel overwhelming to try and teach a room full of students anything about art. I get that… but in many ways, art lesson planning is no different than any of your lesson plans for other Montessori subjects.
My objective in this ultimate guide is to clear the confusion on preparing effective art lesson plans, and save you time and stress from worrying about creating art lessons that don’t support independent creative art making or art literacy.
The resources included in this Ultimate Guide offer insights for Montessori teachers of early childhood (3-6), lower elementary, upper elementary students, and even Montessori-at-home parents. I created this guide to give you tips and ideas for creating art lessons—that are exciting, engaging, and promote independent working—for your Montessori students.
What is a Montessori art lesson?
Before we even start with tips, I think it’s important to understand exactly what comprises and defines a Montessori art lesson. It’s a sequence of visual-arts related instructions that are broken down into steps; they should be done using the proper art mediums and tools in a way that highlights an artist technique and supports art literacy standards. Art lessons can (and should) also be integrated into Montessori core subjects.
The truth is, preparing a Montessori art lesson is more about organizing the steps to giving students exploratory experiences related to their current learning. If you’re planning these properly, you really don’t have to worry about figuring out new ideas to teach for every single lesson.
By reviewing the Ultimate Montessori Art Lesson Guide, it will become easier for you to understand art lesson planning ideas, and ensure the right key features are included in the lessons you present to your students.
You’ll be surprised at how quickly you can implement these ideas in your classroom!
Where to Start: Read Through These Montessori Art Lesson Resources
There’s a treasure trove of Montessori and art-teaching resources on the internet, but going through each of them and finding ones that quality, and actually relative to your classroom, can be overwhelming, confusing, and even exhausted. The pages below offer actionable, practical information, based on the cumulation of all my years of experience as an art teacher and Montessori art teacher trainer.
Though you can jump around between the different links, I recommend you read through these seven resources in the order they’re numbered. Once you feel like you have the basic concepts of creating art lessons, I’d encourage you to continue your Montessori art journey by learning more about my proprietary art teaching method, creative techniques for each visual art domain, and building a Montessori art curriculum for the school year. I have several Montessori art and visual art books, plus, teacher workshops and trainings to help you gain a deeper understanding and confidence in teaching art to your students!
Ultimate Montessori Art Lesson Guide
1. 5 Ways to Integrate Art Activities into Montessori Great Lessons
When you combine the concepts of art and the Great Lessons, you can seamlessly support your students learning without any disconnection!
2. Building a Montessori Art Lesson Calendar to Keep Students Busy Every Month
If you take some time to plan out your calendar, presenting art lessons will be so much easier for you during the school year. The best part of all this? There’s a simple, stress-free way to break it down, this blog shares how.
3. 5 NEW Ways to Tackle Montessori Art Projects
This article is a little inspiration for tackling art lessons, activities, and projects. Because, sometimes, you need a different way of looking at things to come up with fun, creative art lessons for your students.
4. Montessori Art Lesson Planning How-To
Without the proper art training, it’s difficult to know what a great art lesson should actually cover and include. This post sets the foundation to help you choose lessons, set up for activities, and create a schedule for the year.
5. Montessori Art Activities | Big Bang Art Lessons
There are so many different art activities you can present to your students that incorporate the lessons about the Big Bang. Combining art activities with science is the perfect way for students to explore their imaginations and support traditional learning methods.
6. Montessori Art Lesson Planning: My Beautiful (Disastrous) Trip to Bali
Teaching art in Bali was, hands down, the most beautiful art trip I’ve taken this year, but that doesn’t mean everything went exactly as planned. Hopefully you will read about my experience and understand a few ways to work through difficult lessons—and maybe even learn from my mistakes!
7. Montessori Art Lesson Plan Cheat Sheet
One of the most important factors when it comes to lesson planning is staying organized. Download this FREE, handy, three-step cheat sheet and refer to it when you start planning your next art lesson.
One Step Further: Register for My FREE Online Mini-Course
I’ll be honest, creating a Montessori art lesson is one of the most challenging parts about teaching art to your students. However, challenging does not mean impossible!
If you can understand how young children learn art—because it’s often slightly different than with other subjects—creating lessons becomes infinitely easier! It’s the key to keeping your students interested in and excited about your demonstrations and keep the mess down to a minimum. And I’ve developed a FREE digital mini-course—the Phases of Art Development—to help you do just that!
It’s an online course that explains how art making helps kids develop their creativity, fine-motor skills, and focus. Not only will it help you teach your students, but I make it easier on you by giving you a type of Montessori art lesson guide with examples of projects your students will enjoy creating.
Best of all—it’s free! To sign up for the course, click here.
A Short Cut Just for You – Montessori Art Teaching Book
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