Lesson Plans

Explore our free lesson plans for teachers.

Water is Life

Grades: K–1
Subject: Social Studies, Visual Art, Speaking & Listening
Length: 40–50 minutes total

Students will discuss the late 1930s painting Quenching Their Thirst by Eliseo Rodriguez and make their own watercolor paintings to explore and express the need for water.

Home Safe

Grades: 2–3
Subject: Engineering, Social Studies, Visual Art, Speaking & Listening
Length: 40-minute lesson + 50-minute optional extension

Students will discuss the late 1930s painting Nambe Valley, Summer by Sheldon Parsons and explore how residential buildings are designed and constructed in relation to the environment. They will then design and present their own structures in response to natural or local “challenges.”

Different Points of View

Grades: 4–5
Subject: Visual Art, Art History, Speaking & Listening, Language, Research
Length: 45-minute lesson + two 45-minute optional extensions

Students will explore concepts of realism and abstraction in western art and art history through the careful study of 1930s landscape paintings by New Mexican artists.

Adventure Gesture

Grades: 6–8
Subject: Visual Art
Length: Three to five 40-minute periods

Students will explore concepts of gesture and movement in art, first through study of Allan Houser’s 1942 Apache Crown Dancer painting, and then by creating their own action-oriented wire sculptures.

Monumental Inspiration

Grades: 9–12
Subject: Visual Art, Social Studies, English/Language Arts
Length: 65 minutes abridged / 3 hours 35 minutes full

Starting with a close study of Albert Lorey Groll’s early 20th-century etching, Inscription Rock, students will consider how the western American art tradition intersects with the tradition of establishing National Monuments and explore the values at play in both.