10 Art Lessons to Engage Primary and Elementary Students

10 Art Lessons to Engage Primary and Elementary Students

What makes a great primary art lesson?

It might be an unusual material, a funny character, a favourite animal, a surprising technique or simply the chance to make something that looks completely different from everyone else’s.

After years of teaching art, we’ve found that the lessons children remember are often the ones that let them use their own ideas to draw, paint, sculpt, print, experiment and have fun.

Here are 10 engaging art lessons from Creative Kids Art Lessons that are designed for different ages and skill levels from Kinder to year 6.

Kinder to Year 2

K–2 Koala Drawing 🐨

Who doesn’t love a koala?

This drawing lesson gives younger primary students a fun and approachable way to explore drawing with chalk pastels and an Australian animal. Elementary students draw their koala using simple shapes before adding fur texture and colour with chalk pastels. The project is a great introduction to looking carefully at an animal and thinking about how simple shapes can be combined to create a recognisable image.

Why kids love it: It’s a cute Australian animal and everyone can draw their own koala character and add a background colour of their choice.

K–2 Turtle Painting 🐢

Turtles provide a wonderful opportunity to explore colour, pattern and shape. Primary students paint a tea drop turtle shell and then add the appendages. They create a turtle artwork and have fun developing the shell with their own colours and patterns. We add movement to the water and patterns on the shell and limbs with the choice of a realistic or a whacky colour scheme. No two turtles look alike! This is the kind of project where younger elementary students can concentrate on experimenting with paint while developing their understanding of shape and pattern.

Why kids love it: They get to design their own colourful turtle.

K–2 Clay Donut 🍩

Clay is always a winner with younger primary students, and what could be more engaging than making donuts? Students use clay to create their own donut shapes before adding icing, decorations and sprinkles. It’s a simple project, but it introduces important 3D skills such as shaping, modelling, joining and adding texture as well as all those delicious details! Can can choose their own icing colours and create sprinkles and donut decorations of their choice. 🍩

Why kids love it: They get to make pretend food that looks good enough to eat! They also like to trick their parents and siblings because they look so real!

Years 3-4

Years 3–4 Bug and Beetle Prints 🪲

Bug and beetle prints introduce elementary students to the exciting world of printmaking. Your primary students create insects and explore symmetry, repeated shapes, textures and patterns to produce their prints. Printmaking is particularly engaging because kids don’t see the final result until they add watercolour to the prints and they reveal their final artwork. Printmaking is magic to kids because they are not sure what they are going to get till the print is complete!

Why kids love it: There’s an element of surprise every time they make a print. 🪲

Years 3–4 Bruce Earls Beach 🏖️

This project takes inspiration from Australian artist Bruce Earls and his colourful beach scenes. Primary students explore colour, composition and the shapes and patterns found around the beach while creating their own mixed media artwork. They create their own design, characters and beach scene inspird by Bruce Earls. It’s also provides a great opportunity to talk about how artists can take an everyday place and turn it into an interesting artwork.

Why kids love it: Beaches, bright colours and lots of things to discover make this a fun subject to explore.

Years 3–4 Bobblehead Dog 🐶

This is one of those projects that immediately gets children’s attention. Primary students create their own bobblehead dog clay sculpture, combining modelling and construction to create a character with a fun moving element. The project encourages elementary kids to think about form, personality and character, rather than simply producing a flat picture. and it is a toy they can play with!

Why kids love it: Their dog can have its own personality and it’s a fun toy they have made themselves!

Years 5 to 6

Years 5–6 Chocolate Box 🍫

Create art that looks good enough to eat! In this fun project, primary students create a beautifully designed box of chocolates, exploring shape, colour, pattern and presentation. It is also a great way to encourage elementary kids to think about design and packaging. How can you make your chocolates look appealing? How will you arrange them? What flavours, colours and patterns will you use?

Why kids love it: Chocolate is a pretty good starting point for any lesson and they get to design their own chocolates and flavours!

Years 5–6 Mythical Dragon 🐉

Give students the opportunity to design a creature that doesn’t exist and you’ll quickly see their imaginations take over. The Mythical Dragon project allows primary students to develop their own creature using drawing, painting, colour, pattern and imaginative details. Elementary kids can make their dragon fierce, friendly, funny, colourful or completely unusual. Also available in the shop as an individual lesson plan

Why kids love it: There are no limits when you’re designing a creature that exists only in your imagination.

Years 5–6 Galápagos Tortoise 🐢

The Galápagos tortoise provides a wonderful subject for a more detailed artwork while also introducing students to an amazing animal and its environment. Students can explore observation, proportion, texture and colour while developing their artwork. This age group particularly love getting into the details so this drawing projct is perfect for that. It also creates an engaging opportunity to connect art with the natural world and learn about an animal that many students may never have encountered before.

Why kids love it: It’s an unusual animal with a fascinating appearance and plenty of details to discover.

Whole Class Rainbow Serpent 🌈🐍

And finally, a project for the whole class!

The Rainbow Serpent is a wonderful opportunity to bring students together to create a large collaborative artwork inspired by an important figure in Aboriginal Australian culture. Rather than each student working on an isolated artwork, the class works together to create something much larger. Collaborative projects can be particularly exciting because students get to see how their individual contribution become part of a much bigger artwork. Also available in the shop as an individual lesson plan.

Why kids love it: Everyone gets to contribute to one spectacular class artwork.

What Do These Art Lessons Have in Common?

Although these projects are very different, they all have something important in common. They give children a reason to be curious. These aren’t just art techniques. They’re ideas that immediately give students something to imagine, explore and create. And that’s what makes a successful K-6 art lesson. Give children an interesting starting point, show them some exciting possibilities and then let them make it their own.

Looking for more K–6 art lessons?

Creative Kids Art Lessons has a growing collection of over 450 ready to teach art lessons for Kindergarten through to Year 6, with projects covering drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, textiles, artists, cultures and the Elements of Art. With your planning already done, you can spend less time searching for ideas and more time watching your students create, experiment and enjoy art.

Explore our K–6 art lesson plans and find your next favourite project.