Teach Art Elements Line and Shape with Hearts

Valentine's Day Elementary Art Lesson Plan

Feb 5, 2009 Renee Carver

Elementary art teachers wondering how to teach art elements can use Valentine hearts in an elementary Valentine's day lesson plan to teach art elements line and shape.

By using the same shape – a Valentine heart – in elementary art lesson plans to teach the seven elements of art, an art teacher can focus the attention of elementary students on similarities and differences between each element. Introduce and define each element, then have elementary students complete a quick art activity to gain experience with using that art element to create art.

In this lesson, teachers teach the art element line and the art element shape. Students then gain experience with using these art elements by creating artworks in two Valentine's Day art activities.

How to Teach Art Element Line with Valentine Hearts

Draw a straight line on the board and discuss how a line is formed by the path a dot takes as it moves through space. Invite students to come to the board to brainstorm and draw different kinds of lines. For example, lines can be thick or thin, curvy or straight, solid or broken/dotted, zigzagged, or scalloped.

Draw a valentine heart on the board. Have students describe the line that forms its outline, identifying whether the line is curvy, straight, or consists of parts that are both. Then, as a Valentine's Day art activity, have children use lines to draw their own valentine hearts. Encourage students to draw hearts using simple lines first, and then more complicated lines that make tiny loops or zigzag slightly as they form the heart outline. As an extension activity, have students glue small seeds, rocks, pieces of uncooked pasta, pieces of colored tissue, or even candy hearts to paper to form the outline of a heart.

How to Teach Art Element Shape with Valentine Hearts

Color in the valentine heart outline on the board and discuss how the outline of a line forms the area of a shape. Then, pass out paper cutouts of hearts. Have children trace around this heart template on a white card and then color in the outline to create a dark figure on a white background. Next, have children use the heart template as a reverse stencil, placing it on another white card and shading over the edges with a colored pencil to create a negative image of the heart's shape, or a white figure on a dark background.

Note that when a line outlines the area of a shape, it creates both a positive and a negative image. Discuss how in each case, the heart shape is the figure and the space around it is the ground. Note that sometimes the shape/figure is positive while the ground is negative (shaded figure on an uncolored background), and sometimes the shape/figure is negative while the ground is positive (uncolored figure on a shaded background).

Finally, as a Valentine's Day art activity, have students use glue, red paper, white paper, scissors, and red colored pencils to experiment with creating various positive heart figures on negative backgrounds and negative heart figures on positive backgrounds. Invite students to compare and discuss the various art works they make.

Both lines and shapes are key components of artworks. Understanding how lines and shapes can be used to create art will help students examine other people's artworks more closely. A practical knowledge of the art elements of line and shape will also assist students in creating more sophisticated artworks of their own.

Once art teachers have begun exploring how to teach art elements with valentine hearts, teachers can continue elementary students' introduction to the seven elements of art with a Valentine's Day elementary art lesson plan that uses hearts to teach art elements color and value, a Valentine's Day elementary art lesson plan that uses hearts to teach art element texture, and one that uses hearts to teach art elements form and space.

The copyright of the article Teach Art Elements Line and Shape with Hearts in Primary School is owned by Renee Carver. Permission to republish Teach Art Elements Line and Shape with Hearts in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Curvy Lines and Straight Lines Make a Heart	A Dashed Line Can Make a Heart Outline	A Scalloped Line Can Make a Heart Outline
A Negative Image on a Positive Background	Positive Images on a Negative Background