P-12 Lesson Plans

As a resource for P-12 visual art educators, the Zuckerman Museum offers lesson plans for download and use with students in P-12 classrooms. Please contact the ZMA Education team at (470)578-6767 or zma@kennesaw.edu with any questions or comments you may have.

If you are a teacher who has created a lesson using art from the Zuckerman's collection as a curricular support, we would love share it here. Please send an email to the address above for more information.

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Patterns of Pride Lesson Plan

Elizabeth Thomas

In this art lesson for upper elementary students, we study the art of Jeffrey Gibson from the Zuckerman Museum of Art exhibition Jeffrey Gibson: They Teach Love, from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundations and analyze his contemporary post-modern artistic contributions alongside contemporary traditional Native American bead weaving and historical Native American bead weaving. We consider how to make visual patterns from aspects of our cultural identity and how how to make a bead weaving art project in the elementary art classroom. This lesson plan pairs Georgia Visual Art standards with third grade Social Studies standards.
Color Nirvana

Elizabeth Thomas and Chai Avery

In this art lesson for grades 6-12, students will consider how color reads differently depending on chromatic surroundings and experiment with color scheme arrangements to create their own linear collage with adhesive-backed papers. This lesson is based on the exhibition NIRVANA, Polly Apfelbaum displayed at the Zuckerman in the fall of 2023.
Kinetic Meditative Experimental Drawing

Julie Lord, Elizabeth Adams Thomas, and Chai Avery

This lesson for high school students provides an opportunity to make a work of art without a preconceived plan by using their bodies and spontaneous movements to control mark-making. Symmetry is explored along with the art of Heather Hansen and Tony Orrico.
Optics in Art: Ways of Seeing

Christian J. Baker

In this lesson, which relies on art from the ZMA Collection and the exhibition it's your world for the moment displayed in fall 2020, students will learn about the basic mechanics of the eye and its similarities to the camera, explore the history of the camera obscura and its use in art and early photography, learn about perspective as a principle of photography, and learn to relay information on major artists by way of their relationship or impact on photography as an artistic medium.
Paper Sculptures: Planes with Movement

Elizabeth Adams Thomas

In this art lesson for K-3 students will consider how flat planes can be combined to make interesting compositions in both two and three dimensions and practice building their paper sculptures from flat planes.
Art AIDS America: Expressions from an Epidemic

Rebecca Holbrook, Lu Freitas, April Lammers, Rebecca Acree, Jamie Hollis, and Holly Martin

This series of lessons for K-12 Art classrooms emerged from the spring 2016 ZMA exhibition, Art AIDS America. This groundbreaking exhibition underscored the deep and unforgettable presence of HIV in American art. It introduced and explored a wide spectrum of artistic responses to AIDS, from the politically outspoken to the quietly mournful, surveying works from the early 1980s to the present. Art AIDS America was organized by Tacoma Art Museum in partnership with The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and co-curated by Dr. Jonathan D. Katz, Director, Visual Studies Doctoral Program at the University at Buffalo (The State University of New York), and Rock Hushka, Chief Curator at Tacoma Art Museum. The ZMA was the only southern representative on the tour of this critical exploration in art.
Art and Literacy

Tara Hemelgarn, Sherrie Henderson, and Patricia Thompson

This lesson prepares students for a visit, virtually or in person, to the Zuckerman Museum of Art. Using art images from the ZMA permanent collection as displayed in the See Through Walls exhibition, students practice skills in language arts and visual arts.
Laboratory: Where Science Becomes Art

Amy Norton, Madeline Carpenter, Colton Weeks, and Jae Lim

This is group of lessons for K-12 art classroom is connected to the artists in the ZMA exhibition Laboratory, on view November 14, 2014 - February 21, 2015. The exhibition worked to demystify artistic practice by revealing parallels between art and scientific research and methodology. These associated lessons include scientific concepts and principles paired with art.