Standards-based Activities

In this website, we list three types of standards that apply to this site: visual arts, history/social sciences, and language arts. For fourth graders, the visual standards include:

Standard 1.0
Artistic Perception Processing, analyzing, and responding to sensory information through the language and skills unique to the visual arts.

Activity
Have your students visit the "Words Every Young Artist Needs to Know" page. Split the class into groups and assign each group one of the art vocabulary terms listed on the page. Have each group think of ways to represent their word. For example, the "perspective" group can draw their school, Mission, or themselves from a bird's view and a turtle's view. The "texture" group can make crayon rubbings of different textures, such as a brick wall, tile floor, and tree bark. Other groups can use oil paints, watercolors, and pens and pencils. Then bring the groups back together and see if they can identify the concept other groups were representing. Can they think of other art terms?

Standard 1.3
Identify pairs of complementary colors and discuss how artist use them to communicate an idea or mood.

Activities
Print out each painting or display them on the computer screen. Ask students how they feel when they see the colors used in that painting. Which colors influence their mood?

Can they find paintings that use complementary colors? Have them draw or paint a Mission using complementary colors. Can they change the mood of the Mission by changing the colors?

Have students make a color wheel with their name inside. Discuss which colors are complementary.

Standard1.5
Describe and analyze the elements of art (color, shape, line, texture, space and value), emphasizing form, as they are used in work of art and found in the environment.

Activities
Using this worksheet, let each student pick a painting that they like. Use the questions on the worksheet, or make up your own. They can describe the colors, shapes, lines, textures, and spaces in that painting. How do they feel about that painting? What elements make them feel that way?

Standard 5.3
Connections, Relationships, and Applications: Students apply what they learned in visual arts across subject areas. They develop competencies and creative skills in problem solving, communication, and management of time and resources, which contribute to lifelong learning and career skills. They learn about careers in and related to the visual arts

Activities

Construct diagrams, maps, graphs, timelines, and illustrations to communicate ideas or tell a story about a historical event.

Make a large map of California out of paper. Each student should represent their Mission on the map in its approximate location, using a sticker or drawing.

Make a timeline for when all of the California Missions were established, or a timeline for their own Mission, describing when it was founded and what significant events took place there. This timeline can be incorporated into their Mission report.

Make a drawing or painting that represents a significant moment in the existence of their Mission. For example, a drawing of the building of a Mission, or of a Mission that had fallen into ruin. What would that look like?

Make a map that lists which native Indian groups were living in California at the time of the Missions.

Career and Career-Related Skills 5.4: Read biographies and stories about artists and summarize the readings in short reports, telling how the artists mirrored or affected their time period or culture. Read "About the Artist" on this website. Students can write small paragraphs about Father Tupa's life. How might his education, training, and personal life affect his art? How might it be different for a monk to paint the Missions than for a baseball player or a Jewish rabbi?

Name as many artists as they can. In groups, students can research the lives of artists. What do they think about artists? Where do they work? When do they work? What does it mean to be an artist? What else do students know about artists?