Art Is Fundamental: Teaching the Elements and Principles of Art in Elementary School

This comprehensive art curriculum can easily be integrated into any teacher's existing instruction and provides thrilling and rewarding projects for elementary art students, including printmaking techniques, tessellations, watercolors, calligraphic lines, organic form sculptures, and value collages. Detailed lessons—developed and tested in classrooms over many years—build on one another in a logical progression and explore the elements of texture, color, shape, line, form, and value, and principles such as balance (formal, informal and radial,) unity, contrast, movement, distortion, emphasis, pattern and rhythm. Each lesson also represents an interdisciplinary approach that improves general vocabulary and supports science, math, social studies, and language arts. Though written for elementary school teachers, it can be easily condensed and adapted for middle or even high school students. A beautiful eight-page color insert demonstrates just how sophisticated young children’s art can be when kids are given the opportunity to develop their skills.

Eileen S. Prince has been an art specialist in the Indianapolis-area schools since 1970 and is the author of the bestselling Art Matters.