As the crisp mornings give way to the warmth of spring, it’s time to shift gears and bring bright colors, florals, bugs, and Mother’s Day art projects into the classroom. From elementary art to high school, art, there are countless opportunities to explore creativity through spring-themed art projects. Check out some of my favorite spring art projects tailored for each grade level.
ELEMENTARY SPRING ART PROJECTS
Clay Dragonfly
Dive into the world of sculpture with elementary art classes in kindergarten and up with this clay project. Students will create bright-colored, patterned dragonflies using either standard clay or air-dry clay. This hands-on activity not only fosters creativity but also introduces students to basic hand-building techniques through the use of rolling and flattening coils to create the dragonfly. The only glaze you need with this project is clear glaze, use Sharpies to add color and patterns on top once it’s fired. If you are using air-dry clay, once the clay has dried out use paint pens to add decoration.
You can hit the easy button and get this lesson drop-in-reay from my TPT shop here.
Spring Landscape Project
Create beautiful, leafy, bright landscape drawings while also teaching depth and perspective. Using basic supplies like colored pencils, markers, or crayons, students can create their own spring-themed landscapes. Teach and review the concept, atmospheric perspective, to add depth to their scenes. This project is low supply and creates beautiful results.
Hit the easy button and get everything you need to teach this project (minus the supplies) here.
Clay Frames
With Mother’s Day on the horizon, think about projects that could be sent home as gifts. My favorite Mother’s Day art project is this clay frame project. Students practice rolling and creating designs with coils. The coils are joined by smoothing the back. Working with coils on a flat surface is a great introduction to this hand-building technique. To finish the project off add a picture of the student to the frame, have students decorate bags, and wrap it up for the perfect Mother’s Day gift. You can use standard clay, paint it with watered-down paint rather than glazing, or use polymer clay if you don’t have kiln access.
Sending this gift home for moms is not only a thoughtful way to celebrate them, but it will also highlight your program with parents. Grab this lesson from my TPT shop (kiln version here or polymer clay version here) or get a K-5 clay unit that includes this project on my website shop (kiln access unit here or no kiln access unit here).
Spring Themed Cards
Have a messy, fun art class creating shaving cream prints. Place an even layer of shaving cream on a flat surface. Drip liquid watercolor or food coloring on the shaving cream. Use a toothpick to swirl the color together. Lay a sheet of paper on the surface, lightly tap to press the shaving cream on the paper. Scrap the shaving cream off and reveal a beautiful print!
Turn these sheets into special occasion cards to pair with the clay frame project as a Mother’s Day gift or similar. For a spring art project add a butterfly or dragonfly to the front of the card. Only glue the body down, and carefully bend the wings up to create a 3D card.
You can get everything you need to teach this spring art project (with step-by-step instructions and a demo video) in my TPT shop here.
MIDDLE SCHOOL SPRING ART PROJECT
Flower Pot Print
Celebrate spring with a flower pot print project that’s as charming as it is educational. The spring art projects above can be used in middle school as well, and this lesson can also be taught to elementary art students. Using scratch foam, students can carve intricate floral designs inspired by the season’s blooms. If you don’t have scratch foam experience, it’s a cheap, easy way to teach printmaking techniques.
Students draw their design on a separate sheet of paper, and then carefully trace it on top of the scratch foam. The pressure of their pencils creates lines in the foam. When ink is applied it will only print on the flat surfaces, not the indented lines.
My favorite printing hack is to stick with white or light color as the base. Color can be added once the prints are dry using colored pencil, it blends beautifully with the texture of the print. This is much quicker and easier than trying to print layers of color.
You can get everything you need to teach this project on my website here.
HIGH SCHOOL SPRING ART PROJECTS
Palette Knife Landscape Project
If you are looking for spring art projects for high school, this is the time to turn to landscape paintings. Encourage students to embrace the tactile nature of painting with a palette knife landscape project. Using this versatile tool, they can create textured, impressionistic landscapes that capture the essence of spring in bold strokes and vibrant hues.
I love this project as an introduction to using oil paint or acrylic paint. Students use small canvases, 4″x6,” 5″x7,” or 8″x10.” They prep the canvas with an underpainting color. Once the underpainting is dry they sketch basic shapes on their canvases. Working from the back to the front, they fill in the design with loose, thick paint only using a palette knife.
Get everything you need to teach this project on my TPT here or grab this included in my semester painting pack here.
Watercolor Landscape Project
For advanced artists, I push them to experiment with watercolor techniques with a watercolor landscape project. This is a perfect spring art project. As soon as the weather begins warming up I take students outside to practice plein air painting. Next, they take pictures around campus to use for their landscape paintings. Finally, they create watercolor landscape paintings on 8″x10″ up to 11″x14″ sheets of watercolor paper.
Check out tips on teaching watercolor to students in a blog post here.
Check out this project on my TPT here or from my website here.
Spring is a time of renewal and growth, making it the perfect season to ignite our students’ creativity and imagination. Whether they’re sculpting clay dragonflies or painting watercolor landscapes, these spring art projects offer opportunities for artistic exploration and expression as the weather warms up.
I hope this list of spring art projects helps inspire your next warm-weather activity. Don’t forget to follow me on Instagram and TikTok for weekly visual journal demos and other project ideas. Subscribe here to get freebies, project tutorials, and more straight to your inbox. Until next time!
2 responses to “Spring Art Projects: 7 Art Lesson Ideas”
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I look fwd to more ideas on each grade level.
Thanks for checking out some of my ideas!