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Free Online Art Learning Resources for Students and Teachers

2 min read

To support teachers, parents and caregivers, and students, our educators created this selection of activities. Use these lesson plans, films, and other materials to explore art with kids of all ages, from preschoolers to high schoolers.

1. Art Tales for Pre-K

Pre-k to kindergarten

Inspire creativity in your pre-K and kindergarten-aged kids through hands-on art activities and children’s books suggestions. Download coloring pages of works in the National Gallery’s collection for extra fun!

Disponible en español.

Explore Art Tales

 

Lynda Benglis, Untitled, 1968, poured pigmented latex, Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection, 2016.11.2

2. Process and Product

Grades 6-12

Explore different forms of artmaking and find inspiration to build your artistic skills. This resource features videos with contemporary artists, easy-to-follow explainers for artistic techniques, and lessons for beginner experimentation.

Get Inspired with Process and Product

 

Three young Black girls lie on the grass in this closely cropped, sepia-toned, circular photograph so their faces roughly line up near the center. At the bottom of the composition, one girl lies on her back and looks up into the sky. Her head, torso, and right arm are visible. She wears a floral-patterned dress and holds her right hand up to the top of her head. The second girl reclines on her right side behind the first, so she is angled to our left. She props her head in her right hand and looks steadily at us. Her face hovers at the center of the composition. She wears a white t-shirt and a garland encircles her head. The third girl, at the top of the composition, seems to prop her body up on her left elbow. She wears a floral dress and looks down and to our right. Grass and paving rocks fill the space behind her.
Carrie Mae Weems, May Flowers, 2002, printed 2013, chromogenic print, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund, 2014.3.1

3. Uncovering America

Grades 6-12

Uncover what it means to be American through art at the National Gallery. Find stories of creativity, struggle, and resilience. This set of resources for K–12 educators features works that reflect the richness and diversity of the people, places, and cultures of the United States.

Encourage creative, critical, and historical thinking in your students as you examine works of art from the country’s creation to the present day. Fifteen thematic modules include Expressing the Individual, People and the Environment, and Activism and Protest.

Explore Uncovering America

 

Shown from the chest up, a man with short, orange hair and green-tinted, pale skin looks at us, wearing a vivid blue painter's smock in this vertical portrait painting. His smock and the background are painted with long, mostly parallel strokes of cobalt, azure, and lapis blue. His shoulders are angled to our left, and he looks at us from the corners of his blue eyes. He has a long, slightly bumped nose, and his lips are closed within a full, rust-orange beard. He holds a palette and paintbrushes in his left hand, in the lower left corner of the canvas. The background is painted with long brushstrokes that follow the contours of his head and torso to create an aura-like effect.
Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1889, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, 1998.74.5

5. Who Am I?: Self-Portraits in Art and Writing

Grades 3-8

Designed to help students begin to answer the important question "Who Am I?," these lessons use self-portraits from the National Gallery's collection to inspire students to create their own self-portraits, poems, speeches, and letters.

Explore the Who Am I? Resources

 

6. Paint 'n' Play

Ages 5 and up

Create your own work of art using brushes and palettes from artists in our collection. Try painting like Vincent van Gogh or Alma Thomas.

We recommend playing on a computer or tablet. If you’re using a tablet, be sure to rotate your device to landscape mode.

Experiment with Paint 'n' Play

 

Winslow Homer, Native hut at Nassau, 1885, watercolor and graphite with scraping and blotting on wove paper, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1994.59.20

7. Art and Ecology

Grades 3-8

Artists are often particularly keen observers and precise recorders of the natural world. Travel with your students to different landscapes, from a park to a jungle, through works in our collection. Prompts and activities encourage students to consider the environments they live in and draw connections to issues of pollution and industrialization.

Explore Art and Ecology

 

8. D.I.Y. Art

All ages

Make your own creation inspired by works in our collection by artists from Henri Matisse to Alma Thomas. Craft paper flowers inspired by Berthe Morisot or tie-dye fabric inspired by Claude Monet.

Browse our "How To" Videos

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