Middle School
Art Cards for Trade
The Essential Question
How can students engage in meaningful daily art-making?
Objective
Students will create small-scale artworks on trading cards to engage in daily art creation and share them with their peers.
Materials
3 x 5" (7.5 x 12.5 cm) card stock, color medium (pencils, markers, paint, etc.), glitter or other small embellishments
Procedures
- Students draw an image in pencil that is meaningful or appeals to them—perhaps something they saw that day.
- Students select the medium of their choice and add color to their small-scale designs.
- Students add their name to the back of the card and gift their card to a friend or classmate. That classmate creates an art card to gift back in return.
- Students discuss with their chosen peer why the image they created was important or appealing to them.
Editorʼs Note: For a contactless art-trading option, use a digital drawing app to create a small drawing for a classmate.
Assessment
What did students like about this project? Why was each image created important or appealing to them? Is the small size of the cards easy to work with, give, and collect?
Lisa LaMonica is an art supervisor, author, and illustrator in upstate New York.