The Talking Walls: Georgia O'Keefe Art Lesson Plan

Georgia O'Keefe Art Lesson Plan for Kids

5th Grade Georgia O'Keefe Art

This is a go-to lesson for me and here's why: This lesson works for any grade... really! I've done this with Kinders up to 8th graders, and have found they all can be successful at it. They turn out really nice and are great for brightening hallways, the kids learn about an artist and get an introduction to observational drawing. Read on if you want to see how I do it!

You will need:

- Assorted fake flowers - buy these once and you can use them for years! Michaels always has sales on their flowers, too.

- Oil Pastels or crayons

- Watercolor paints

- White paper.... big or regular sized... how much time do you have??

Lesson Plan:

1.) Introduce Georgia O'Keefe. Wikipedia some stuff about her life, and/or find a youtube video about her. There's tons of stuff out there.

2.) Show pictures of Georgia O'Keefe's flower paintings. Ask the kids what they observe about them, and what they think she's doing differently from other artists. If you can get it out of them, you're looking for them to say she's painting them really big! Explain that part of what made her art famous, was that she painted flowers in EXTREME CLOSE-UP instead of the typical view of flowers in a vase on a table or something.

3.) Talk about the difference between a CLOSED COMPOSITION and an OPEN COMPOSITION. (Closed means nothing's going off the page and everything's contained in the picture boundaries, Open composition is the opposite). Explain that they will be doing an Open Composition today. Show them your example, and tell them there's one rule when they're drawing their flowers: Their flower must be SO BIG that it touches at least 3 SIDES OF THEIR PAPERS. This is a hard one for some kids to get.... a lot of kids tend to want to draw everything tiny. This is a good stretch for some, and gets them out of their comfort zones.

4.) Hand out art supplies and work! Give each kid one of the fake flowers to draw. If you're working with older kids, remind them to look for color variations and tiny details and shapes they might see in their flowers - work on those observation skills!! Draw first in oil pastel, cover with watercolors. You might emphasize the use of a contrasting color in the background to really "pop" their flowers.

5.) Let dry, then hang up somewhere boring that needs some LIFE and COLOR!