Middle School Art Projects

I run an after school program. It only works on 1:00 to 1:00 and a half, a project should be the one to be completed in about two sessions (three hours)


This is a project that my students could do?

Materials must be less than one dollar per student - there are about 30 students, about 7 of them are autistic.

more than half the cost from my pocket, I can not spend too much.

I also want my students to learn from a project that is inspired by a famous artist. ex-Picasso-style self-portraits, etc.


Thank you for your help!

I would try a project that allows children is very creative and concentrate on painting what they feel. try cubism. everyone can do and its fun for kids to see what they can find in other students' work. some basic Crayola paint, markers, pencils and paper is all u need, and more images can be cubism from the Internet.

You can always try for materials and the children try to find something creative. Do not show examples. The children will copy.

How about setting up an art book flip they could create not bring in tons of paper so they can make it short they want to attract him.

It is an idea that I wanted to do for some time. This is not really an idea on a topic known artist. But I want to Cross-age teaching, is to have older children make something that teaches younger children. I wanted to take a large statue of a man, or use a real person. then sketch or photograph of twelve tables that twenty meters from different angles, like the twelve positions of a clock. Secondly, I want to laminate the 8X10 picture (on paper from the printer) and package them as an activity for the kinders to do in a classroom. I would put something non-descript in the center of a vast open space, like a ball, or to mark the center, where the statue or a person was standing. Then ask the children to have the twelve tables in a circle around the ball in the right order of perspective. See what I mean? Gosh, kids gain so much to this activity would help the artistic eye.

For students who do not have autism, please read the book by Betty Edwards' Drawing on the right side of the brain ". With just a piece of plain paper coupon in front of your college students, a piece of pencil and nothing else, they can begin to learn to draw very well. There are exercises such as:

1. Upside-Down Drawing
2. Using Pure Contour Drawing
3. The positive aspects of negative space

A very generous teacher taught me how to draw using the exercises in this book, and the lessons I learned from this book is invaluable.

I worked with autistic children for a summer, and I fear they need more than one on-one supervision, and the design may be too demanding for them. An artistic medium that would work for them is clay. They can create and manipulate matter at will.