In this Article I’ll give you ideas for November Art Lessons or Art Projects that you can do in your Art Classroom, general classroom, or at home if you’re a homeschool parent. These are all themes for art that are perfectly suited for teaching art to kids in November! You can use these ideas for Elementary or Middle School students. #novemberart #msartastic #iteachart
Let’s take a look at some ideas for art you can create in the month of November!
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November Art Ideas for your Classroom
Okay my lovely friends, guess what… We made it through Halloween. I LOVE HALLOWEEN so I’m totally sad it’s gone, but I always feel like it is a milestone in the classroom. Like now routines are set, kids are hopefully more used to the hand washing and mask wearing if you’re in person… Or if you’re online hopefully they are more used to logging in on their own or participating and… Hopefully they are participating. It is hard for me to comment because my situation is different from your situation. Each of us are in VERY different situations as no one has a consistent set of rules that we’re following. That is just… life right now you know? I’m just going with the flow because I can’t control it anyway and it makes me stressed when I think about all the new, strange, and unusual things I’m doing. Let’s take a look at some art ideas that you can do in your classroom or art classroom or at home that are perfect for November!
Create art with the theme “Grateful”.
OK so for the month of November, the first theme that you can do with your class is to create art with the theme “grateful”. First you can begin by brainstorming what the word grateful means with your class. You can cover Topics such as a feeling of appreciation or kindness and you can also talk about it being thankful and what that means and looks like… so you can really talk a lot about kindness and appreciation.
Next you can ask your kids what kind of art that they can make that shows what the word grateful means or what thankful means or what kindness is. So you can spend some time now having kids collaborate maybe on collaborative posters where they are creating large brainstorms over what they think they could create.
Now you can have kids take pictures of the collaborative posters or go and hang them around the room and then you can have them take little post-it notes or tiny stickers and they can place their sticker or note beside an idea they like. This way they are voting for a favorite idea! You could have them do 2 votes if they are smaller or if you have a smaller class. In this way you can immediately be informed as to what you should plan for the next month or so and also plan in a way that covers your own student’s interests which will of course, immediately engage them!
Once you can visually see all the different ideas that the kids have liked, (so it’s kind of like a Facebook like but with either stickers or like post-it notes) then you can kind of build a unit around their own interests. That’s one way that you can start talking and creating grateful themed artworks in your classroom.
Other ways you can incorporate the theme “grateful” in your classroom is by having students create collages. They can go through magazines and then use a variety of art mediums to clip out letters that spell the word grateful and paste them onto their paper. They can cut out things that they are grateful for or appreciate having in their lives, or they can also add their own drawings of things that they’re grateful for, or appreciate and value in their worlds. As well they can add words to their collages or their artworks that explain or show further meaning for what grateful means to them.
Kids can also create by using this as a sketchbook prompt. Your sketchbook prompt in November or a sketchbook assignment in November could have the theme grateful. So your theme for your sketchbook or your prompt that month or one of the weeks in November could be “what are you grateful for” or “what are you thankful for”. Finally, they can create a portrait of someone that they are thankful for. Perhaps in the middle school or high school levels kids can find or take a picture of someone that they’re thankful for in their own worlds. Either it’s a family or a friend or someone that is playing a leadership role in their own life, whatever that means to them. Before they create they can take a photograph of the person, then they can use that picture as reference in a portrait artwork they create for that month… and if they’re doing a larger piece that is something that will take a lot of time and might be a whole theme in November.
For Thanksgiving Art Ideas, scroll to the bottom! There is even a FREE YouTube Turkey Drawing Tutorial!
Social Emotional Learning in Art
I love using art as an opportunity to teach Social Emotional Learning, which is also known as SEL, in the art classroom. Some of the things that you can teach for social emotional learning in your classroom are Growth Mindset lessons, you can teach kids about the Zones of Regulation, you can teach kids to reflect on experiences in their own lives, and you can also have kids set goals and think about their dreams and aspirations for their future. For example, kids can create artworks that reflect on their own past! This is where they get out the things that are maybe their worries or that are bothering them, or they can think about things that bring them happiness. They can also incorporate their dreams for the future on the same artwork. As well students can use this opportunity to explore things that they can control and can’t control in their own worlds by drawing it instead of just writing about it.
You can also teach social emotional learning by exploring emotions and what they look like through drawings and artworks. So what a kid looks like themself when they are in the Green Zone or if they’re feeling calm and peaceful… they can draw what it looks like when they, specifically, are feeling down or feeling blue or sad or they can draw what they look like when they are in the yellow zone and their feeling worried or frustrated or scared; all those kinds of things can be expressed in art. Art is a great way to allow students to explore their own choice of mediums and they can do social emotional art as artworks themselves or you can explore them during the month of November as sketchbook assignments. These can also be assignments that they could do over distance learning or remote learning.
I think it’s going to be very important for teachers to explore social emotional learning this year not only because it’s important for us students own well being, but it’s going to be imperative this year because of the pandemic and there is a lot going on politically, there’s a lot going on in the world, and lots going on in our own communities… Schools themselves are not the same as kids remember them being before the pandemic… So there’s a lot going on and they might have had experienced loss in their lives and I think that it’s important for teachers to really ensure that we are meeting their mental and physical and well-being and emotional needs. Really make sure that you try and experiment and explore some aspect of social emotional learning in your own classroom, whether it is small as sketchbooks or if it’s larger as an art piece itself.
Winter Art Ideas for November
Finally, you can start exploring some winter art in your classroom. This is the time of year that you can begin creating all your wintery scenes and exploring the joy of creating art that has to do with winter. Unless it is not winter for you, then save this for when it is applicable! Jot down the notes and file them to a place that makes sense for you. Back to winter! I love to use this opportunity to create artworks that explore value by creating snowy value scenes, whether I’m doing black and white value backgrounds like a night time scene, or maybe I’m just creating a gradient or value from dark blue to a light blue with snow. Maybe it’s like an evening scene and I have snow coming down! It’s a really great way to really explore creating landscapes that have a winter feel.
You can also start exploring cool colours with your students during this time of year and I love creating cool colours art schemes in my classroom. You can do a lot with silhouette drawing as well for this. You can also have students think about what kind of animals they see in the wintertime or animals that live in snowier climates… maybe it’s northern Canada or the Arctic or Antarctic. You can have students start thinking about what animals live there and then you can create artworks around those animals. Maybe you’re drawing them in sketchbooks or they’re investigating them online and then are doing magnifications on parts of those animals… so just closing in on parts of that animal for magnification. Maybe it’s an Elk’s head or part of the antler or maybe you’re closing in on parts of a Penguin’s face or the feet… so you can think about it in different ways that are maybe just as strange and unusual as this pandemic. But don’t feel like you can’t enjoy the seasons even though it’s covid.
So really use this opportunity to explore winter themed stuff so that way you have them available for displays in your school or on a digital art Gallery for when winter really comes if that is your season right now. To everybody who is not having winter right now and is going into maybe a summary month, I am sorry that I am giving you ideas for winter at this moment. I recognize that not everybody’s in winter but for me this is what’s happening in my own world as I live in Canada. However, I live in the rainy side of Canada and so for 10 months it looks like rain with a little bit of snow add a little bit of sun. All the gray inspiration you’ll ever need….
Thanksgiving Art Ideas
For anyone who is celebrating Thanksgiving in November, here are my Thanksgiving art ideas that you can create leading up to the celebration! Scroll to the bottom to find my FREE YouTube Drawing Tutorial!
Download Free Art Worksheets for Kids
Click here to download free art worksheets that you can print to allow kids to explore art at home!
Don’t Forget to FIND MORE!
Don’t forget to check out my TeachersPayTeachers store for Thanksgiving, Winter, Growth Mindset, or Social Emotional Learning Art Lessons. I have created over 500 art lessons that explore a bunch of themes, holidays, and seasons! So for speedy lesson planning, make sure you check out the store and click the link on the left side for the category you want… For example: Winter. Or, for a fully planned curriculum, make sure you join the Artastic Collective Art Teacher Membership when it opens again in January!
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Well…
Well my lovely friends, I hope you enjoyed this November podcast episode or blog post (however you chose to consume!) and I really hope that you take some of these ideas and make them your own or explore these themes with your kids. Don’t forget to do classroom brainstorms either digitally or even on Zoom with the whiteboard feature and just see what your student’s interests are before you start planning or creating art lessons because if it is to do with their interests they’re going to be a lot more engaged and wanting to do the artwork… so don’t forget to use that vote for an idea trick where you give students either a little sticky note or a sticker to go place their vote on an idea that they like. Happy planning art teachers and artists at home. I hope you enjoyed this episode don’t forget to subscribe and share it so that other teachers and art teachers are able to get ideas for teaching art in their classrooms enjoy your week and I’ll see you in a couple weeks with the next episode where I talk about “Creating Happiness in your Classroom”
Find my Autumn Art Lessons on the Ms Artastic YouTube Channel!
Finally, if you need some ideas or need to take a break in your classroom or from recording lessons for online instruction, I’ve begun to create autumn artworks on my YouTube Channel! Find the lovely drawings in my YouTube Channel, Ms Artastic!
How to Draw an Acorn
Let’s draw a cute, kawaii Acorn for Autumn with this art lesson! Use whatever mediums or materials that you have and follow along with this tutorial!
How to Draw a Falling Leaf
Let’s draw a Cartoon Falling Leaf for Autumn with this art lesson! Create a cute Art Project that explores creating movement with line. Use whatever mediums or materials that you have and follow along with this tutorial!
How to Draw a
Pumpkin & Crow
Art Lessons by Ms Artastic
Thank you for reading my blog post! I am grateful that you did and I appreciate you having took the time to read to the end. Thank you so much. Please write any questions you have in the comments section of this post.
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Yours Truly,
Kathleen McGiveron (Ms Artastic)
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