Top 9 'History-in-Your-Hands' Famous Art Styles to learn with elementary schoolers using everyday supplies - Goh Ling Yong
Ever walked through a museum with your kids and heard the inevitable, "I'm bored"? It's a common refrain. The vast halls, the "don't touch" signs, and the quiet reverence can make art history feel like a distant, untouchable subject. But what if you could pull those masterpieces off the walls and bring them right to your kitchen table? What if you could transform art history from a stuffy lesson into a vibrant, hands-on adventure?
That's exactly what we're going to do. Forget the fancy canvases and expensive oils. We're about to embark on a journey through time, exploring nine famous art styles using supplies you likely already have scattered in drawers and craft bins. This isn't just about making pretty pictures; it's about connecting with the great minds of the past, understanding their world, and empowering your little ones to see their own world with more creative and curious eyes.
By recreating these iconic styles, children don't just learn a name or a date—they experience the process. They feel the energy of Abstract Expressionism, the precision of Pointillism, and the delightful weirdness of Surrealism. It's history you can hold in your hands. So, roll up your sleeves, cover the table with newspaper, and let's make some art history!
1. The First Masterpieces: Prehistoric Cave Painting
Before there were museums or even written words, there was art. Let's travel back 40,000 years to a time when artists worked by firelight on the rocky walls of caves. This is the perfect starting point because it’s raw, expressive, and incredibly fun to replicate. Cave artists used natural pigments like charcoal, ochre, and manganese to depict the world around them—herds of bison, graceful horses, and, most personally, their own handprints.
To create your own cave wall, you don't need a time machine. Just grab a large sheet of brown kraft paper or a flattened cardboard box. Have your child crumple it up and then smooth it out again to create a wonderfully craggy, rock-like texture. For the "paint," use charcoal sticks, chalk pastels in earthy tones (brown, red, black, and yellow), or even a bit of mud from the garden! The goal isn't perfection; it's about capturing that primal, storytelling spirit.
Top Tip: The most iconic element of cave art is the hand stencil. Have your child place their hand flat on the "cave wall." They can then use a spray bottle filled with watery brown paint (or a toothbrush dipped in paint to flick bristles) to spray around their hand. When they lift it, they'll leave behind a perfect hand silhouette, a signature that connects them to the very first artists. Encourage them to draw simple animal shapes, just like our ancestors did.
2. The Royal Profile: Ancient Egyptian Art
Next, we journey to the land of pharaohs and pyramids. Ancient Egyptian art is famous for its distinct and orderly style. It was all about clarity and communication, often telling stories of gods, rulers, and the afterlife. The most recognizable feature is the composite view: heads, arms, and legs are shown in profile (from the side), while the torso and eye are shown from the front. This unique perspective makes it a fascinating and surprisingly simple style for kids to imitate.
Create your own "papyrus" by using light-brown construction paper or by painting a piece of white paper with a weak, watery tea solution and letting it dry. For the artwork itself, have your little artist draw a person or an animal using the classic Egyptian rules. Remind them: face to the side, eye looking forward, shoulders straight on, and feet pointing the same way. Their color palette should be limited to earthy reds, rich blues, gold (a yellow marker works great!), black, and white.
Top Tip: Encourage them to create a story in a single line, like a comic strip on a tomb wall. They can draw themselves as a pharaoh, their pet as a sacred cat, or invent their own hieroglyphs to spell out their name. Using a black fine-tip marker to outline everything after they’ve colored it in will give their artwork that sharp, defined look so characteristic of Egyptian art.
3. The Dabs of Light: Impressionism
Let's leap forward to 19th-century France, where a group of rebellious artists decided to paint what they saw and felt, not just what was there. The Impressionists, like Claude Monet, were obsessed with light and how it changed the appearance of things. They used short, quick brushstrokes and unblended colors to capture a fleeting moment—an "impression." From a distance, the dabs of color merge in the viewer's eye to form a vibrant, shimmering scene.
This style is perfect for kids because it’s not about staying in the lines—it’s about color and movement! Give them some tempera or acrylic paint and a small, stiff-bristled brush. Instead of long, smooth strokes, show them how to make quick dabs and dashes of color. A fantastic subject is Monet’s famous water lilies. They can paint a blue background for water, then add dabs of green for lily pads and little pops of pink, white, and yellow for the flowers.
Top Tip: The secret to Impressionism is layering colors without mixing them on the palette. Let your child dab yellow and blue next to each other to create the illusion of green. Have them look at a simple object in the room and try to paint not the object itself, but the way the light hits it. It’s a wonderful exercise in observation.
4. The Dotty Delight of Pointillism
Born out of Impressionism, Pointillism takes the idea of optical mixing to a whole new level. Led by Georges Seurat, Pointillists built their entire paintings out of tiny, distinct dots of pure color. Up close, it looks like a collection of colorful spots. But take a step back, and your eyes blend the dots together to see a complete, luminous image. It’s a magical fusion of art and science.
This is one of the most accessible and meditative art styles for kids. All you need are Q-tips and paint! Pour small puddles of different colors onto a paper plate palette. Have your child lightly sketch a simple shape—a rainbow, a piece of fruit, a boat—onto a piece of paper. Then, they simply dip a Q-tip into the paint and start dabbing, filling in the shape dot by dot. No brushstrokes allowed!
Top Tip: Challenge them to create new colors without mixing paint. To make green grass, they can fill the area with a mix of yellow dots and blue dots placed very close together. For a purple grape, they can use red and blue dots. This technique requires patience, but the final result is always stunning and a great lesson in color theory.
5. The Roar of Color: Fauvism
Welcome to the wildest, most colorful art movement of the 20th century! The Fauves (which means "wild beasts" in French) believed that color could be an emotional force, completely separate from its natural subject. Why should a tree be green and brown? Why can't it be electric blue with a pink trunk? Artists like Henri Matisse used bold, unrealistic colors and expressive brushwork to convey feeling over reality.
Fauvism is pure, unadulterated joy for kids. It's a license to break the rules! Give them a piece of paper and some vibrant paints or oil pastels. Ask them to draw a simple portrait of a family member, a pet, or their favorite animal. Then, tell them the only rule is that they can't use realistic colors. Encourage green faces, orange skies, and purple cats. The bolder, the better!
Top Tip: Another fun Fauvist project is to try Matisse-inspired paper cut-outs. Give your child brightly colored construction paper and a pair of safety scissors. Have them cut out simple, organic shapes—leaves, flowers, squiggles, and blobs—and arrange them into a collage on a contrasting background. It’s a mess-free way to explore bold color and composition.
6. The World in Shapes: Cubism
Ready to see the world from a new angle? Or rather, multiple angles at once? That's the core idea behind Cubism, pioneered by the legendary Pablo Picasso. Cubist artists deconstructed objects and figures, breaking them down into their basic geometric forms (cubes, spheres, cylinders) and showing them from several viewpoints simultaneously. It’s like walking all the way around a person and then showing everything you saw in one single picture.
This mind-bending style is a fantastic way to stretch your child's creative thinking. Start with a portrait. Have them draw a simple oval for a face. Then, ask them to draw one eye looking straight ahead and the other eye looking to the side (a profile view). Do the same with the nose. Then, use a ruler to divide the face and background into sharp, geometric sections, and color each section with a different shade.
Top Tip: A great hands-on way to understand Cubism is with collage. Have your child draw a simple object like a guitar or a bottle. Then, have them cut it up into several pieces. They can then glue the pieces back onto a new sheet of paper, but slightly out of order or overlapping. This physical act of deconstruction and reconstruction makes the abstract concept of Cubism tangible and fun.
7. The Dream Weavers: Surrealism
What if clocks melted, trains flew out of fireplaces, and men had apples for faces? Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Surrealism! Inspired by the theories of Sigmund Freud, Surrealist artists like Salvador Dalí and René Magritte sought to unlock the power of the unconscious mind. Their art is filled with dream-like scenes, bizarre juxtapositions, and illogical scenarios that challenge our sense of reality.
For kids, Surrealism is an invitation to let their imaginations run wild. Collage is the ultimate Surrealist tool. Hand over a stack of old magazines, scissors, and a glue stick. Propose a strange prompt, like "Create a creature that is half-animal, half-machine," or "Design a landscape where fish fly through the clouds." The goal is to combine ordinary things in extraordinary ways.
Top Tip: Play a drawing game called "Exquisite Corpse." Fold a piece of paper into three sections. The first person draws a head at the top and folds the paper over to hide it, leaving only small guide marks for the neck. The second person draws a torso, and the third draws the legs. When you unfold the paper, you'll have a hilariously bizarre, collectively created Surrealist figure.
8. The Action Painters: Abstract Expressionism
Get ready to move! Abstract Expressionism, particularly the "action painting" style of Jackson Pollock, is all about the physical act of creating. The art isn't just what ends up on the canvas; it's the drips, splatters, and gestures that got it there. This movement valued spontaneous, subconscious creation, expressing raw emotion through color and texture rather than recognizable images. Here at the Goh Ling Yong blog, we love any activity that gets kids fully immersed in the creative process.
This is the perfect outdoor art project. Lay a large sheet of paper, an old bedsheet, or a big piece of cardboard on the grass. Use watered-down tempera paints in squeeze bottles, cups, or on sticks. Let your child walk around the "canvas" and drip, drizzle, and splatter the paint. There are no rules about what it should look like. It's all about the energy and the fun of the process.
Top Tip: Experiment with different "tools" to apply the paint. Try using sticks, toy cars to roll through the paint, droppers, or even their own hands (if you're brave!). Play some energetic music in the background to inspire movement and different rhythms in their painting. The focus is 100% on the experience, not the final product.
9. The Everyday Icon: Pop Art
In the 1950s and 60s, artists like Andy Warhol decided that art could be made from anything—even a soup can or a comic strip. Pop Art celebrated the bold, graphic world of advertising, celebrity culture, and mass-produced objects. It's characterized by bright, flat colors, strong outlines, and the repetition of images, turning the ordinary into something extraordinary.
This is a fantastic style for kids who love bright colors and recognizable subjects. Have them choose a very simple, everyday object from your house—a banana, a favorite toy, a cookie. Trace the object onto a piece of paper four times to create a grid. Now, have them color each of the four images using a completely different, crazy color scheme, just like Warhol’s famous Marilyn Monroe prints. Use markers or paint to create flat, solid blocks of color.
Top Tip: To get that iconic Warhol screen-printed look, try block printing. Carve a simple shape into a potato half or a piece of craft foam. Dip it in paint and stamp it repeatedly onto paper. Using different bright colors for the background and the stamp itself will create that vibrant, high-contrast Pop Art aesthetic. It’s a great way to talk about how art can make us see everyday things in a new light.
Your Adventure Awaits
And there you have it—a whirlwind tour through tens of thousands of years of art history, all from the comfort of your home. By exploring these famous art styles, you're not just keeping your kids busy with a craft project. You're giving them a new language to express themselves, a new lens to view the world, and a tangible connection to the creative giants who came before them.
The most important takeaway is that there is no "right way" to do any of this. The goal is to experiment, to get a little messy, and to see where your child's imagination leads. You’re building more than just a refrigerator art gallery; you’re building confidence, curiosity, and a lifelong appreciation for the power of art.
So, which famous art style will you and your little artist try first? Will you be splattering paint like Pollock or dotting away like Seurat? Share your creations and experiences in the comments below—we can't wait to see the masterpieces you make
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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