Overview of Art Curriculum
Elementary Art Curriculum In elementary art, we work with themes and big ideas as a guide for each unit. For example, some themes may be “dinosaurs”, “self-portraits”, or “hybrid animals”. A big idea may be “healing”, “place”, or “time”. I try to make almost every lesson interdisciplinary in some way. Art processes and techniques are taught during each unit, but the actual idea and design is all of the student’s own thinking. I encourage students to break away from main-stream designs and symbols, and come up with something all their own. I also encourage something called reappropriation. This is an approach to making something that is already a symbol, icon, or famous work of art and recreating it in a completely different way. Artists often borrow other’s ideas and then transform them to create a new kind of meaning. I teach about the elements of design, which are line, color, shape, form, value, te...