In my first year of teaching, I got a one-day-a-week position in a grade 4/5 classroom and I sucked at it. It was rough coming in partway through the year and only being there once a week. I looked inexperienced, I was inexperienced, and I didn’t have the skills I needed to be successful yet. I had to teach all the science and art curriculum, but have everything wrapped up by the end of each day. It was brutal. To top if off, I was terrified of teaching art, a subject I had always struggled with.
Not only did I not like art, I walked into a class with a group of four boys that didn’t like art either. In fact, they hated it. It was incredibly hard to get them to engage in any of the art projects that we were doing in class. At first, they flat-out refused. After a few weeks of them sitting on the couch sulking and glaring at me, I finally leveled with them. I printed out the provincial art curriculum and handed them a copy.
“Here’s the deal,” I said. “You don’t like art, and I get that. But if you don’t do some visual art this year, you’re going to fail art. Failing art would be ridiculous, because everyone has a different idea of what ‘good art’ looks like, so it’s almost impossible to fail if you do basically anything. I don’t want you to fail art. I’m assuming you don’t want to fail art. But I do know you want to play outside. I want some art to mark, you want the playground. We’re going to put those two things together.” I showed them the Big Idea in our curriculum that said “[a]rtists experiment in a variety of ways to discover new possibilities and perspectives” and said – “this is what I want from you. I want you to do some playground art. We can call it [in a fancy voice] ‘artistic experimentation’.”
Immediately, I got buy-in from all four boys. It was pouring rain outside the first time we did this, and they didn’t even care. Out into the rain they went with their papers and crayons and paint brushes. They had finally bought into one of my ideas. Did that buy-in last for the rest of the year? Not for all of them and not in every activity, but it completely changed my relationship with three of those boys and they would at least put a half-hearted effort into the rest of the art projects we did together. We also were able to develop a pretty good rapport, so even when they struggled to engage, we could level with one another pretty well.
Playground Art
I will say that I was only able to do this while the rest of the class worked on my original art plans because we had a playground directly outside of our exterior door. I could stand in the doorway and watch the boys and the class at the same time. However, you could try these ideas as stations with your whole class!
- Swing Art: Put your paper, a cup of water, and a water colour paint set on the ground just in front of your swing. Lay on the swing on your stomach, holding the paintbrush. Dip your paintbrush in water and paint lines as you swing back and forth.
- Playground Texture Art: Take your paper and some crayons outside and try to find as many different textured surfaces as possible. Make rubbings of each one. You can cut up the different textures and make them into a collage later if you want.
- Bark Mulch and Rock Art: Make structures out of the bark mulch and rocks, then show me what you’ve made.
- Splatter Paint: Line an area with scrap paper or cardboard, put on a paint shirt*, and splatter paint a piece of paper. Try a few different pieces, using different colours and different splattering strategies.
Other Visual Art Ideas that ‘Art-Hating’ Students Have Loved:
- Draw So Cute Directed Drawings: It seems to me like the kids who hate art the most are the ones who feel like they can’t do it. This youtube directed drawing channel is so well-done that everyone (even me) can follow along with successfully. The photo below shows a banner we made for the Parent Tea where students choose their own tutorial from the channel to follow.
- Pixel Art: Strategically colour in graph paper to make pixel art designs. I have done these as pixelated “quilts” and as character portraits.
- Dot Day Art: This is art that really feels like play. It usually wins my ‘art-hating’ students over because they get to splatter paint, which is always a sure win. The only rule is to paint something interesting using one or two main colours and cut your piece into circles! This project is inspired by Peter Reynold’s picture book, The Dot and the display ideas is one I got from @artwithmrs.e on instagram.
- Dog Man Comics: Dav Pilkey had a great tear-out Dog Man comic template in the back of one of his books (sorry, I can’t remember which one, but it was one of the first three). When I used it as an English/Art assignment, the kids went wild! You can find plenty of comic book templates online or have kids design their own.
- Box Creations: I LOVE collecting cardboard boxes and letting kids take an afternoon to design anything they want. We’ve had so many fun creations!
- Nature Photography: My students always love an opportunity to go outside. I like to break them into groups of three and have them share a class/school ipad. They need to share the ipad and take turns taking photos of things they think are beautiful or interesting. When we return, they go through the photos and delete all but the best three (1 per person). Then they air drop them to me, and we marvel at them all together as a class. Sometimes I print them out and mount them on poster board as a mini photography exhibit.
- Land Art: Students use materials they find outside to create beautiful temporary art. This would be a great opportunity for an artist study on Andy Goldsworthy!
- Loose Parts Sculptures: My students have really enjoyed creating sculptures out of our loose parts. Even the kids who don’t normally like art go all-in with these! Scroll through the photos in the post below to see some examples. As a side note, the only thing I spent money on in my Loose Parts collection was the container set. The rest came from things I or my family members found and collected.
- Cookie Decorating: I supplied the sugar cookies and icing sugar, and the kids shared candy and sprinkles that they had brought from home. This was such a fun activity! I only made one cookie per student, so they had to choose their designs carefully.
- Dioramas: The photos below are from biomes created as a cross-curricular science and art project. My students had a great time making these and they turned out so well!
- Weaving: I made the students find a small stick as ‘homework’, and we did these mini woven tapestries with scrap yarn.
- Sewing: Although they found it to be really hard work, my students loved sewing these owls! We sold them at an art/bake sale to raise money for the Nature Conservancy of Canada and the kids were so proud of themselves!
- Knitting: I haven’t done this in my class yet, but this was an incredibly popular activity when I ran day camps years ago. I even got feedback from parents saying that their children were knitting at home non-stop after camp. One parent told me her thirteen-year-old son was knitting under the covers at night!
- Room Redesign: My students had a blast redecorating our room like Mr. Lemoncello’s library. I didn’t assess their work, but it could have been a really interesting group project for art class! Be forewarned though, this was such a messy endeavor. I felt like I was drowning in messiness for awhile, but my students thought it was the best thing ever. Scroll through the photos below to see what our beautiful mess looked like!
And of course, art is more than just visual arts; it also includes dance, music, and drama! I’ve explained some of my favourite drama games in this post, and I’m always on the lookout for dance ideas because I am the world’s most awkward dancer.
Do you have any other art ideas for kids who “hate art”? I’d love to read them in the comments!
