Students will learn about medieval manuscripts and artistic representations of fantastical creatures. They will create their own fantastical creature using complementary colors and write a paragraph describing it.

Students study an ancient bronze statue, analyze its pose, and discover how conservators remove and prevent corrosion. They learn that the bronze used to make this sculpture is an alloy of copper and tin with small amounts of antimony, lead, iron, silver, nickel, and cobalt. They use the periodic table to research the chemical formulas of compounds used to make bronze. After learning about oxidation-reduction reactions that occurred in the statue, students speculate about the conservation techniques needed to conserve the bronze sculpture.

Students participate in a "thirty-second look," followed by a class discussion about Jan Brueghel's painting "The Entry of the Animals into Noah's Ark". Students then use description words and complete sentences to write about their favorite animal in the painting; draw the animal using line, color, and shape; and present their work to the class.

Students will create a timeline outlining various groups' struggles for equal opportunity and create a 30-second radio or video public service announcement (PSA).

Students will analyze shapes and patterns in a photograph, hear stories about people who were forced to move to internment camps because of their ethnicity, and create drawings that tell a story about a young girl's life in an internment camp.

Students will read primary source documents about the U.S. internment of Japanese Americans following the bombing of Pearl Harbor and will examine various versions of a photograph by Dorothea Lange and explore how cropping can evoke different effects.

Students will examine the bust, "Portrait of Nadine Dumas", and create a portrait bust of a friend to give to the friend as a gift. Students will then discuss the modeling techniques used to communicate likeness and expression in a three-dimensional bust portrait.

Students will study the composition of landscape paintings, emphasizing space, depth, and the concepts of foreground, middle ground, and background. Students then create their own landscapes using principles of landscape composition.

Students create a nameplate and an original fairy tale book using an illuminated manuscript format.

Students examine primary resources, photographs by Dorothea Lange, and a U.S. map to understand the migrant experience during the Great Depression.

Students will form two groups, and each group will analyze a still life. Then each student will write a three-paragraph essay describing how to draw the work of art they are studying. Each student will exchange his or her essay with someone in the other group who will draw the still life based on the essay's description. Depending on the accuracy of their peers' drawings, students will add more details to their essays.

Students will analyze "Man with a Hoe" by Jean-Francois Millet, and learn how the artist's use of shape and space creates emphasis. Students will discuss their interpretations of the painting and provide visual evidence to back up their ideas. They will create a persona poem that demonstrates their interpretation of how the man in the painting feels. Students will then illustrate their understanding of how shape and space creates emphasis by drawing a person in their family who works hard.

Students discuss how the environment influences animal characteristics by looking at Hans Hoffmann's painting "A Hare In the Forest". After the discussion, students research an animal that uses camouflage, paint that animal within its environment, and write a sentence describing its habitat. Students use this as a basis on which to write a sequential narrative about their animal and its relationship to its environment. This lesson is an extension to the "Open Court Reader" second grade unit on animal camouflage called "Look Again."

Note: This lesson was designed for students with autism. The students will review a few elements of art, specifically colors, shapes, and different types of lines. They will identify these elements in Vincent van Gogh's painting Irises. The students will then practice drawing different types of lines and shapes in different colors, and will use these elements of art to produce an original crayon-resist piece inspired by Irises.

Students will gain insight into the influence of the Enlightenment on American society and government by comparing Neoclassical objects from the Getty collection to American civic architecture of the time.

Students will observe emotions depicted in an 18th-century bust and two 19th-century paintings. They will learn about and create similes based on paintings that depict people waiting and receiving a court verdict, respectively. They will write their own narratives about a time they had to wait, and they will use similes to describe characters' emotions. Students will then create two original works of art that illustrate their narratives.

Students define metaphor and discuss its use in writing and visually. Students develop a personal metaphor and use it to write about their own experience.

Students will create a drawing from a written description and examine and discuss how European artists from the past created images of China that combined imagination with written descriptions and limited visual imagery.

Students compare and contrast a photograph and a photo-collage depicting the same highway and write a descriptive composition of both images. They identify one-point perspective in works of art then draw a desert landscape using one-point perspective.

Students observe live insects and examine insects depicted in a seventeenth-century drawing. They identify the three characteristics of an adult insect: a three-part body (head, thorax, and abdomen), six legs, and antennae. They collect and draw live insects, incorporating a variety of shapes and lines.