Keeping the kids engaged in art class can be a difficult task. This is especially true if you have students who work more quickly in the art room than others.
If you have an art class full of students who are eager to learn but have finished the task that you set for the day, you should consider enjoying some games with your students!
There are lots of fantastic art games to play in the classroom and they are all designed to engage the minds of your students and encourage their creativity.
If you like the idea of bringing some art games into the classroom, you’ve come to the right place! We’ve compiled a list of the best classroom art games for you to try with your students today!
These games are great for kids of any age and they will help to keep your creative juices flowing.
Puzzles
Puzzles may not sound like something that work well in the art classroom, but, in reality, they are perfect for encouraging budding artists!
Puzzles get your creative juices flowing because the act of putting together a puzzle can put a person into a state of flow. When your students enter the flow state, their creativity also flows.
Puzzles are great at benefiting the cognition of people of every age, and you can adjust the difficulty level of the puzzles depending on the group of kids that you are working with.
Puzzles are also great at improving kids problem solving, cooperation, and memory skills. All of these skills help the children to excel in the art room.
It is a good idea to set up a puzzle in your classroom for those who have finished their projects early. They are also great at keeping the kids calm and focused.
Paint Online
Paint Online is perfect for art students. It is a great digital platform for kids through which they can express their creativity. They can paint and express themselves through this program.
Paint Online includes a fun art game that helps the kids create masterpieces. It was set up to encourage the kids to be more spontaneous and confident with their painting skills.
This tool provides kids with lots of digital resources to create fantastic art pieces on their own, playing with paint brushes, markers, crayons, paint sprayers, and erasers.
This is a great interactive online game for kids, and it is a great way for the kids to spend time in the art room.
Tropical Bird Art
Another great art game to play in the classroom is tropical bird art. This involves the kids working in a team to create a beautiful piece of art.
For this game, you will need some paints, different colored construction paper, feathers, googly eyes, and glue.
To play this game, one student will have to take off a shoe and sock and copy the outline of a foot on a piece of paper. This will create an outline of a footprint. The students should then paint the inside of the footprint.
After this, the team of students will need to draw a tree branch and cut it out. The footprint will then be stuck onto the tree branch, with the toes resting on the branch.
Once this is done, the students can work together to decorate this by adding feathers for the tail and googly eyes. All of the birds created by the different groups can then be added together to create a class art project.
Pictionary
Pictionary is a great art game to play in the classroom. This game encourages your students to become confident with clearly drawing objects so that others can recognize the drawings.
This game is fairly straightforward to play in a classroom. You will first need to generate a list of terms that students are aware of. Choose words that reflect their ability and age so that they can express these words in picture form.
You should then divide the class into two teams. Each team should select someone to draw from their team.
The artists will have 10 seconds to look at the word before they are allowed to begin drawing it.
They will draw the image until a member of their team correctly guesses the word they are drawing. Artists are only able to use images, they are not allowed to use letters or words.
When the team members are guessing the answer, they will need to shout out the guesses. As a moderator, you will need to listen for the correct term. The team that guesses the drawing correctly first will win a point.
After you have finished the round, you should switch the artist with another student and start the process again. At the end of the game, the team with the most points wins.
Color Rush
This is a great game to teach your students about the art of mixing colors!
To play this game, you will need to paint a large piece of paper with one color. You will later cut this into smaller pieces so that all of the groups receive the same color.
This game can be played individually or in groups of two to four students. If the students are working in teams, they will mix their colors on their own while also cooperating with their teammates.
You will need to first pass out color cards of the same color to each team. Set a timer for your students for 5 to 7 minutes and during this time the students will need to match the color on the card that they have been given with their paint. When the time is up, the kids must stop mixing the colors.
After this, the students will need to choose the color that is the closest match to the color on the mixing sheet and submit it to you.
You will then need to award one point to the team that has matched the color most accurately.
This game is great for developing students’ awareness of color mixing and the color wheel. It is also a super fun game that will have your class in fits of giggles!
Go Fish, Art History Version
Go Fish is a game that continues to stand the test of time. Every generation loves this game, and it is perfect for the classroom!
Birdcage Press has developed several versions of Go Fish that are related to art. These games are perfect for the classroom and will keep your students engaged and focused in class.
The best thing about these games is that they are great at introducing students to new artists and artwork and they will teach the kids about the artists while remaining engaging and fun. There is plenty of information about the artist on each card, meaning you will never run out of new information.
This game is easy to play and store, and you can easily set it up whenever you need to. Even though it seems like just a card game, the kids will start to absorb the facts on these cards very quickly, learning lots of new information!
Quick, Draw!
If you have access to some computers for your class to use, Quick Draw is a great game that is super fun and engaging. It is great for preschoolers, but students of any age will benefit from the game.
This game was built using machine learning, and it is the first of its kind by Google! To play this game your students will draw, and the computer will try to guess what they are drawing.
At this stage, the game may not always be able to recognize what the kids are drawing, but it will learn more the more it is played with.
This game is extremely engaging, giving your kids 20 seconds to draw the picture that they are instructed to draw. After 5 attempts, Google will then share the game results.
Let your students have a go at this game individually. If you have plenty of computers, then they can play simultaneously. If you don’t they can take it in turns.
This game is great for younger children as it will help you to understand whether they are aware of what the objects are.
Final Thoughts
Learning through games is a great way to teach kids of any age. The games on this list are sure to keep your students entertained for hours on end, while still keeping them engaged with the art world.
Through these games, the students will learn some essential skills and they will encourage their creativity in art class.
These games are quick and easy to set up, making them perfect if your lesson has finished early, or if you have some time to kill! Give these games a try today if you want to bring some joy to the classroom!
Hi, my name is Helena Waters and I was a teacher for 40 years before retiring last year.
During my time as a teacher I dedicated the majority of it to making classrooms as fun as possible, with educational parties, fun activities, and low cost entertainment that made the children excited about learning.
I taught children of all ages, from preschoolers to high school students. Now, with the pandemic having uprooted everything that children once knew about school and learning, I think that the need for my ideas is bigger than ever.
That is why I created School Sparks, a place in which I can write down and share all of my ideas on how to get students excited about going to school again. I hope that you’ll find some useful within a school setting, even at home too!
