Here’s a simple, short lesson plan from the terrific Practical Pages website that is full of neat ideas to make great works of art come alive for your kids — by tracing them!

Why would you want to have your student trace some famous artwork? Nadene shares a few ideas:

• Create a reference to a famous work and add it to written biographies and narrations.
• Apply techniques famous artists use
• Learn to mix colours, do colour washes and paint in layers with details last
• Make the art work “your own”
• Focus on the original for clues and details
• Use the original for some more contemporary art techniques (like a collage/ a mural/ coasters/place mats/ quilt designs/ build a 3D landscape, etc.)
• Although many adults consider this just “colouring in”,  I encourage them to give it a try!  It is MUCH more difficult than it seems!

This is a great idea… give it a try.  CLICK HERE to go to the website!

MAKING BOOKS with your KIDS

Author and artist Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord has been a teacher of making books since the late 1980s. On her website, she has project instructions for creating eight different types of hand-made books, including an accordion book, an elastic book, a color poem book, a summer journal, a leaf book, and more fun projects, all presented with detailed, illustrated instructions. Loads of fun ideas here!

CLICK HERE to go to her site!

StartsAtEight.com has a great post on how to help your tween and teen-aged student dramatically improve their drawing skills, utilizing “right brain / left brain” exercises as popularized in the book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards. Included are links to five downloadable lessons to help guide your student into putting this into practice.

PS. This really works.

CLICK HERE to go to the website!

Our daughter Jess has published three volumes of her very popular “Finish the Drawing” book series on Amazon. Today we’re featuring this delightful sampler of reproducible pages she has put together from those volumes to get your kids’ creativity flowing and have loads of fun in the process.

Just print out the pages you want to draw on, grab a pencil, pen, crayons or markers and go to it.  What could be simpler? No more “I don’t know what to draw” blues!

Whether you use these for art lessons, or just for fun, these are a great way to  stimulate the imagination and get your kids off the screens for a few hours. Check it out and see how fun these creative drawing prompts can be.

(Jess would love to see your finished creations and share them on social media. You can Instagram tag her: @rollingdonutpress and use the hashtag #FinishTheDrawingBook – or email her at: RollingDonutPress@gmail.com )

Here’s the link to download this PDF ebook:

FINISH THE DRAWING STARTER PACK

(If you are on a PC, right-click the link and “save link” to your computer. If using a Mac, press the “control” key and click the link, then save to your Mac!)

If your kids are interested in animation and learing how to animate their own cartoons, here’s a great collection of beginner lessons for them from professional animator Larry Lauria.

The Toon Institute’s free animation course offers a baker’s dozen lesson on the basics of animation, including the basics of animating a bouncing ball, squashing and stretching animated objects, character and face construction, timing, how to “thumbnail” a scene, and much more. These are a lot of fun, and explain the fundamentals of animation very well.

CLICK HERE to go to the site!

Today’s resource is this lovely collection of vintage illustrated Mother Goose rhymes, taken from various books from the late 1800s & early 1900s.

Great for coloring and for learning or re-visiting these classic childhood rhymes. Enjoy!

To download this PDF coloring book, RIGHT CLICK HERE and “save link” to your computer. Mac users, press the “control” key, then click the link and save to your mac.

The EduPics site has 1000s  of clip art images, coloring pages, pictures, photographs and handicrafts. Everything has been classified in themes which are commonly used in primary education. The coloring pages are especially designed to be used throughout the year at school. You can search any topic to get coloring pages, clip art, and photos for school use. Great for notebooking or lapbooking for free!

CLICK HERE to go to the site