You can use inexpensive materials to teach children about different art making processes and materials. For example, you can introduce children to sculpture by showing them pictures of famous sculptures and then invite children to create their own sculptures by bending, twisting and manipulating sheets of aluminum foil. You can also introduce them to printmaking by bringing in a variety of cut fruits and vegetables. The students press the vegetables into trays of paint and then stamp them on paper.
The KinderArt website suggests teaching children about primary and secondary colors by creating a fruit color wheel. The children paint images of fruit on paper, beginning with a banana, a red apple and some blueberries. Next, they mix colors to create a green lime, an orange and a bunch of purple grapes. Afterward, they cut out, position and glue the red, blue and yellow fruits to a round piece of paper. Lastly, they position and glue the green, orange and purple fruits between their parent colors.
Many different civilizations have used masks throughout the centuries. You can show children pictures of masks and discuss the differences between the masks based upon the civilization or time period. Afterward, children can create masks using materials such as paper plates or heavy paper, string, scissors and materials such as paints or crayons to decorate their creations.
Students can also create Mexican animalitos, or little animals, with heavy paper, a stapler, markers or crayons, and newspaper or cotton. The students cut out two matching animal forms from the heavy paper and decorate the images. They staple the forms together around the outside edges only, leaving an opening near the top open so that they can stuff the animalito with newspaper or cotton before stapling it shut. (see references 5 and 6, resource 1)
You can incorporate art vocabulary into nearly every lesson by introducing terms, discussing their meaning, and then having students create works of art that incorporate the term. For example, you can introduce pointillism, a style of art that incorporates small dots of color rather than lines or brush strokes to create images, by teaching students about Georges Seurat, the famous impressionist artist who invented the method. Afterward, students can create their own pointillist drawings.