Art

About this course

Third grade art is organized around the elements artists actually name. The opening unit works through line, shape, form, texture, value, proportion, perspective, contour drawing, and quick gesture drawing, including a shaded value scale from white to black and a ball that turns solid once the shadow side is added. The color unit covers primaries and secondaries, the color wheel, warm and cool families, tints and shades, complementary and analogous pairs, and a practical lesson on mixing cleanly (work on a palette, not in the tray, and add dark into light a drop at a time). Units seven and eight come back to drawing and color a second time with longer and more demanding lessons, adding one-point perspective with a horizon line and a vanishing point, and color saturation, the difference between a vivid color and a muted one.

The making units carry most of the year. Painting covers transparent watercolor, wet-on-wet blooms, dry brush texture, opaque tempera, blending, layered glazes, and then applies them to skies, to water and reflections, and finally to a complete scene with sky, background, middle ground, and foreground. Sculpture is real hand-built clay: pinch pots, coil pots, and slab construction with scored edges and slip used as glue, plus paper sculpture, found-object assemblage, animal sculpting, and a closing lesson on sealing and displaying finished work. Mixed media adds collage, torn paper, crayon texture rubbings, simple printmaking, carved foam stamps, a combined landscape, nature art from what you gather outdoors, and a free-choice final piece.

One unit is art history, and it is more substantial here than in earlier grades: cave painting at Lascaux, Egyptian profile conventions, Greek and Roman idealized figures, medieval illuminated manuscripts copied by monks, the Renaissance, the Reformation era with Rembrandt and the Protestant turn toward portraits and landscapes over church imagery, American folk art, and Christian artists working today. No pictures are included in the lessons, so a lesson that says to study a Rembrandt needs a book or a screen. The course is 72 lessons across eight units at about 30 minutes apiece, which makes it a light subject rather than a daily one. A lesson opens with a short prayer, then six minutes of reading, about fifteen minutes of making, and a review, and closes with a ten-question quiz that grades itself. It is far more making than reading, and the supply list is longer than the crayons, paper, scissors, and glue the lessons name. Plan on watercolor and tempera paint, a couple of brushes and a mixing palette, watercolor paper for the dry-brush and wash lessons, air-dry clay with craft sticks and a fork for scoring, white glue for sealing, foam sheets for stamps, and whatever leaves, stones, bottle caps, and scrap material you can collect.

What the course covers

• The elements of art: line, shape, form, texture, and value
• Proportion, contour drawing, and gesture drawing
• One-point perspective and depth on a flat page
• Color wheel, tints, shades, saturation, and mixing technique
• Watercolor washes, wet-on-wet, dry brush, and glazing
• Tempera painting, skies, water, and full scenes
• Clay hand-building: pinch, coil, and slab construction
• Paper sculpture, found-object art, and finishing a piece
• Collage, rubbings, printmaking, and stamp carving
• Art history from cave painting through Rembrandt to today

What your student will be able to do

• Shade a value scale and use light and shadow to make forms look solid
• Draw a room or road in one-point perspective from a vanishing point
• Mix clean colors on a palette and choose a deliberate color scheme
• Paint a landscape using wash, wet-on-wet, dry brush, and layering
• Build a clay vessel by pinch, coil, or slab and finish it properly
• Combine drawing, painting, and collage into one planned artwork

Scope and sequence

All 8 units of Art for Grade 3, in the order they are taught.

Every lesson, by title

All 72 lesson titles are listed here — nothing is withheld until you download. Open a unit to read its contents.

One whole lesson, exactly as it comes

This is a real lesson taken from the middle of the course — the teaching text, the practice, the homework, and the first three quiz questions with their answers. It is not a marketing excerpt.

What you will need

Drawn from the materials named across all 72 lessons of this course. Most families already own most of it.