How to Teach Art History to K-8 Students | All About Art

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How I Teach Art History to My K-8 Students


I love teaching my students about famous artists. They get so excited to meet a new artist every month, and it makes me so happy when they remember an artist they studied months, or even years, earlier. A kindergartener spotting a Van Gogh on a calendar and shouting the name across the room never gets old.

Over the years I have settled into a simple, repeatable system for teaching art history to K-8 students: one artist a month, one short lesson, and a note-taking routine that grows with the grade. Here is exactly how I run it.



Start with the skills, then pick the artists

I build my K-8 art curriculum by first mapping out what art concepts and skills each grade should be practicing that year. Only then do I choose which artists, past and present, will demonstrate those age-appropriate ideas.

From there, every class from kindergarten through 8th grade gets a different "Artist of the Month." I set aside one "Art Appreciation" day each month to focus on art history and that month's artist, which keeps the routine predictable for students and easy for me to plan around.

Introduce the artist with a slideshow

On Art Appreciation day I teach every grade with a slideshow. Each artist slideshow opens with a short, student-friendly biography and then moves through several slides of the artist's actual artwork, which is the part students really respond to. I keep the biography to the kid-appealing facts (where the artist lived, how they got into art, what was strange or surprising about how they worked) and let the artwork carry the rest. Mine are all in my collection of 50 famous artist slideshows, so I can pull up whoever the month calls for without building a deck from scratch, and the whole set is also part of my Famous Artists Elementary Art Curriculum if you want some matching art projects and coloring pages too.

Having the whole set ready means I can follow a student's curiosity, too. When a 3rd grader asks about "the man who cut off his ear," I can put Van Gogh on the board the next week instead of promising to get to him someday.

Give students a way to remember

Seeing the art once is not the same as remembering the artist, so every student records something. In kindergarten and 1st grade, students write the artist's name and draw a small picture inspired by what they saw. It is simple, but writing the name themselves is what makes it stick.

Grades 2 through 8 take notes on a more detailed worksheet or build up an ongoing artist booklet, so by spring they have a personal record of everyone they have studied. Several note-taking formats come with my artist slideshows, and you can download a free sample worksheet to try it with your class first. It is the piece that turns a fun slideshow day into something students can actually look back on.


The slideshows I use

The artists I teach stretch across centuries and continents, from Leonardo da Vinci and Hokusai to Frida Kahlo and Alma Thomas. That range is deliberate: my students see that "artist" does not mean one kind of person from one place or time, and I can always find someone whose work fits the skill we are practicing that month. Each slideshow follows the same format my students know by heart, a short biography followed by several slides of the artist's real artwork, so the routine feels familiar no matter who the artist is. Here are some of the slideshows available in my store:



New to this and want to try it first? I have free slideshows for Henry Ossawa Tanner and Berthe Morisot in my store, so you can try one Art Appreciation day and see how it goes.

Why one artist a month works

The monthly artist rhythm works perfectly when I see each class once a week for several years. It is short enough that art history never eats a full unit, frequent enough that students build a real mental gallery over the year, and consistent enough that a kindergartener who starts with a Monet slideshow is still recognizing artists as a 5th grader. By the end of the year, students are pointing out artists in books, on packaging, and in each other's work, which is exactly the goal.

If you see your students every day, an “artist of the week” might better suit your schedule.

If you want a longer, research-style companion to this routine for your older students, I use a separate Artist Research Project, and you can browse all of my step-by-step lessons on the K-8 Art Lessons hub.

A free guide for planning your artist calendar

If you are mapping out your own Artist of the Month calendar, my free Artist Reference Guide makes it a lot easier. It is 8 pages covering 200 artists across 8 centuries and 6 continents, with each artist's name, years, nationality, style or period, medium, and a notes column, so you can match artists to the skills you are already teaching. Subscribe below to get the guide sent to your inbox!

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