Landscape Painting: Artists Who Love the Land

A 45-Minute Substitute Lesson Plan for Kindergarten

Objective

Students will learn that a landscape artist paints pictures of nature (trees, rivers, hills, sky) using paint from a brush, and that artists use simple tricks—like making things close up bigger and things far away smaller, and overlapping shapes—to make a flat picture look deep, like you could walk into it.

Materials

• This resource, "Landscape Painting: Artists Who Love the Land" (read the "Introduction" section and "About the Artists" section aloud to yourself before class)
• Paper (one sheet per student)
• Crayons or markers
• (Optional) A map of the United States, if available, to point out "the West" and "Maine"

Warm-up (~5 min)

1. Gather students on the carpet or at their seats.
2. Say: "Today we are going to talk about artists who love painting the land—like rivers, hills, mountains, and the ocean!"
3. Ask: "Have you ever seen a picture of a river, a mountain, or the ocean? What did it look like?" Let a few students answer.
4. Explain simply: "A landscape painting is a picture of nature, made with paint. Artists use paint to make trees, lakes, waterfalls, and clouds appear on paper, even though it's all just color from a paintbrush!"

Main Activity (~25 min)

1. Tell students about four real artists from the resource, in very simple terms:
2. George Catlin – He loved painting winding rivers, hills, and Native American life out in the West.
3. Thomas Moran – He painted the Yellowstone River and the Grand Canyon. His paintings were so beautiful they helped Yellowstone become the first national park!
4. Albert Bierstadt – He traveled to California and painted big, impressive pictures of its wilderness.
5. Winslow Homer – He loved painting the rocky coast of Maine and the crashing ocean waves.
6. Explain one "space trick" simply, using the resource's ideas:
7. Trick 1 – Winding River/Path: A river or path that winds from close-up to far away makes a picture look deep. Say: "If you draw a wiggly river starting big at the bottom of your paper and getting smaller as it goes up, it will look like it goes far away!"
8. Trick 2 – Big and Small: Things close to us look bigger; things far away look smaller. Say: "A tree right next to you looks huge, but a tree far away looks tiny—even if they're the same size tree!"
9. Trick 3 – Overlap: A rock close to us can hide part of a big cliff behind it. Say: "When one shape covers part of another shape, it looks like one is in front and one is behind."
10. Hand out paper and crayons. Have students draw their own simple landscape:
11. A winding river or path from the bottom of the page to the top
12. At least one big shape (close up) and one small shape (far away) — like trees or hills
13. Encourage overlapping shapes (a rock in front of a hill, etc.)
14. Walk around and remind students: "Big and close in the front, small and far in the back!"

Wrap-up / Exit Ticket (~10 min)

1. Have students hold up their landscape drawings.
2. Ask each student (or a few, if time is short) to point to and name:
3. Something big and close in their picture
4. Something small and far away in their picture
5. Their winding river or path
6. As an exit ticket, ask each student to tell you (or whisper to you) one thing a landscape artist paints (example answers from the lesson: trees, rivers, mountains, clouds, the ocean).

If Time Remains

Have students add "air" to their pictures, as real landscape artists do. Explain: "Artists don't just paint land—they paint the sky, sun, wind, and clouds too!" Let students add a sun, clouds, or wavy lines for wind or waves (like Winslow Homer's ocean) to their drawings.