5 Summer Art Lesson Ideas, Projects, and Art Activities for Kids

In this blog post I’m going to give you 5 fresh and new ideas for Summer Art Ideas for your classroom! These are all ready-to-go ideas that you can use in your classroom that have a lovely summer vibe and will have your students in your art classroom exploring art mediums, experimenting, and being creative! I got you my lovely friends! Alright, let’s get into it!

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In this blog post I’m going to give you 5 fresh and new ideas for Summer Art Ideas! These are all ready-to-go ideas that you can use in your classroom that have a lovely summer vibe and will have your students in your art classroom exploring art mediums, experimenting, and being creative! I got you my lovely friends! Alright, let’s get into it!

SUMMER LANDSCAPE ART:

Students can create a landscape artwork that shows what the landscape looks like in the summer. This is a great way to explore seasons and the changes that occur during this season. You can design a project that explores what kids might see in your area during the summer and colors they might see. You can also explore warm colors with this or challenge them to include as many warm colors that they can in their landscape. This is also a great opportunity to incorporate the Element of Art: Space into your teaching and talk with your students about the different parts of a landscape, including foreground, middle ground, and background. For older students, you can even turn this into a perspective landscape. Lots of ideas and things you can tackle all with one art project!

body of water during golden hour — Photo by Sebastian Voortman on Pexels.com

CACTUS ART LESSONS FOR KIDS:

You can also have your students create cactus themed artworks for a fun and trendy summer art vibe! Students, both in primary and in older grades, can create cactus artworks! Have your students find pictures of cacti and they can draw what they see with oil pastels and paint in the rest with watercolor paints! For older students, they can do grid drawings of cacti and can create detailed pencil crayon or colored pencil drawings. If you live where cacti naturally grow, you can have students do a photography lesson with a cactus theme… explore portraits in color, black and white, close-ups, or magnification… fisheye… from below, from above shots… Detail shots… It can be a fun thing to do and will allow them to get out of the building for a bit if they’re close by!

For ready-to-use Summer Art Lesson Tutorials, check out my lessons in my TpT store! I have a primary and upper elementary or middle school cactus art lesson that is ready-to-use! Find it in the summer section of my TpT store or with your Artastic Collective membership.

TROPICAL FISH ART LESSON IDEAS:

A fun thing to explore in the summer is tropical fish! You can have students create tropical fish for an artwork! For younger students, this can be an exploration of mediums to create large, fun fish. For older students, they can research and find images of tropical fish and you can create art based on the research images! You can explore watercolor painting, acrylic painting, pencil crayon or colored pencil drawings… you can have students learn grid drawings with tropical fish… The choice is yours! It is a fun theme to explore for summer and there are so many fish to choose from that I’m sure all your students will be able to find a lovely fish to create!

For a ready-to-use tropical fish art lesson for primaries, go to the show notes on my blog to find the link to this art lesson or find it in the summer category of my TpT Store or in your AC Membership!

PINEAPPLE ART LESSONS:

Another themed art lesson that you can teach is creating Pineapple art. This trendy topic can take on oh so many styles! You can create ceramic or paper mache pineapples, you can bring in a pineapple for a still life drawing. You can have kids take a bit of a slice of pineapple and draw it with a bite removed! You can have students photograph a pineapple and explore different photography skills. Or students can make pineapple artworks!

You can find ready-to-use pineapple art lessons in my TpT store! I have a fun Pineapple Line Art lesson for all elementary students, and I also have a watercolor Pineapple painting art lesson for upper elementary or middle school students! Check them out in the Summer category of my TpT Store or with your AC membership or find the direct links in the show notes in my blog!

FREE Art Lessons for Kids!

3 Free Ms Artastic Art Lessons for your Classroom!

Click here to download my Free Art Projects that you can use in your classroom!

WARM COLORS SCAVENGER HUNT:

Finally, you can create a “Warm Colors Scavenger Hunt”. This is a unique way to teach color schemes and warm colors to your students when you teach color theory! This is a great lesson as well for the Element of Art: Color! Students can create a collage drawing of things that are each of the warm colors OR you can create a grid. On the grid you can label each of the Warm Colors and then students must find objects of these colors, draw them as small still life studies, and then color them with that color. You can choose to do just Primaries and Secondaries for elementary and younger students, then for older students you can add Tertiary colors as well. This is a LOVELY idea and the finished products will be masterful studies that will not only allow kids to explore the Element of Art: Color and Warm Color schemes, but will also be a wonderful lesson on drawing still life and will help them with their observational skills!

yellow bumblebee gathering pollen close up photography — Photo by Kat Jayne on Pexels.com

Try Them Out!

Try out an idea and don’t forget to tag me @msartastic if you share pics of your work on social media!

This is Kathleen McGiveron, Ms Artastic, signing out.

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Find Drawing Tutorials & 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 have lots of Art Video tutorials that are classroom friendly on my YouTube Channel!

Try these Ms Artastic Art Lessons!

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)