Folk Art in the Americas: Bundle of 8 Art Lessons for Grades 4-7

Introduce your students to the varied, rich, and colorful folk art of the Americas! This bundle of 8 projects features mola collages, butterfly sculptures, animals of Peru, Florida landscapes, folk art flowers, gold coasters, fish decoys, and Arctic birds. Also included is a map showing the location of the inspiration for the artworks. This really helps students place the projects in the context of North, Central, and South America. This theme is a wonderful tie-in with the school’s Western Hemispheres social studies curriculum.

In addition to learning the art history behind each project, students get experience with a variety of art materials and techniques, from drawing and collage work, to forming an armature and sculpting with plaster gauze, embossing with aluminum metal tooling, creating mixed media paintings with chalk pastels, tempera, and colored pencils, working with polymer or air-dry clay, drawing and adding color with oil pastels, and printmaking with soft craft foam. It’s so engaging and enriching for children to have the opportunity to work with and explore these media.

Each project includes an artists' spotlight, a detailed photo tutorial to guide you through each step of the art-making process, and handouts to help the children feel successful with the drawing step. This bundle will save you so much time!

-Molas Inspired by Cuna Art in Panama: This lesson includes 14 designs simplified from mola patterns and set on a grid. Lots of choices but enough structure for the kids to feel successful. Students draw their molas in pencil, go over the lines and color in with markers, and cut them out. The backgrounds are created with washi tape or strips of construction paper.

-Butterfly Sculptures Inspired by Mexican Folk Art: Introduce your students to folk art butterfly sculptures from Mexico, and the important role butterflies have played in the culture there. The kids learn how to create a sculpture with recycled cardboard, aluminum foil, plaster gauze, and paint. We use Jazz Gloss tempera paints and you could also use acrylics.

-Animals of Peru in Metal Tooling Inspired by Peruvian Folk Art: These animals in metal tooling are such an engaging project for children! Each student selects one of 12 animals from Peru to draw and then etch onto aluminum tooling foil. Students create a relief of their animal, along with a sun or moon, and a border on the tooling foil, working with a wooden stylus and popsicle stick. We add color with India ink and mat the artworks on construction paper.

-Florida Landscapes: These beautiful landscapes are inspired by the Florida Highwaymen, a group of 26 self-taught African American artists in the 1950s-70s. These folk artists were originally laborers in the orange groves of Florida. The children create these mixed media paintings with chalk pastels and tempera paint.

-Folk Art Flowers: These brightly colored flowers in a gold vase are inspired by tinsel paintings, which are artworks painted on glass that’s backed by tinfoil. This was a form of American folk art popular among young women in the 19th century. We create ours with tempera paints on black paper to mimic the dramatic look of the tinsel painting. Students learn to draw a folk art vase filled with flowers, taking inspiration from the tinsel paintings and the handouts of 15 different vases and 20 flowers.

-Gold Coasters: The kids love working with clay so much, and these gold coasters are a wonderful way to bring in some art history. The children learn about gold metal working and treasures developed by the Incas and Aztecs in the ancient Americas. We create clay coasters with a relief design and use any extra clay to form beads and animals. We create these in polymer clay, but also included is an alternative for using an air-dry clay like Crayola. The coasters are painted in acrylic.

-Fish Decoys: These beautiful fish are modeled after fish decoys from New York and the Great Lakes states for ice fishing. It’s believed that Native Americans passed the tradition onto European settlers of North America. Starting with a piece of corrugated cardboard, students draw a freshwater fish using the grid method. The kids learn how to blend and layer oil pastels for a rich looking artwork. We cut out the fish and display them on a wooden base or as wall hangings.  

-Arctic Birds Inspired by Inuit Prints: These Arctic birds are a fantastic project to build drawing and printmaking skills while learning about Inuit art from Canada’s Arctic Circle. The project includes 18 line drawings of Arctic birds, with step-by-step instructions on how to draw each. We create both marker prints in color and prints with washable printmaking ink. You can do either or both, whatever works for you.

Thanks for checking out this bundle! I teach art to children in Westchester, New York. My passion is creating art projects my students love and sharing them with you.

You can follow me here on TpT, on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/ruthchapman.art/

and on Pinterest at https://www.pinterest.com/ruthchapman/

My personal art is at https://www.ruthchapmanart.com