Classroom Resources

MCASD Project, Lesson, & Activity Plans

MCASD is dedicated to supporting educators and providing resources to promote art education in the classroom and out-of-school time learning environment.

The Museum’s Education & Enagagement Department offers a variety of standards-based lesson plans that can be adapted for various grade levels and subjects, utilize inexpensive materials, and promote class or home dialogue regarding contemporary artists and the culture of our time.

Please click on the links below to download PDF lesson plans based on MCASD collection piece and exhibitions and resources.

Museum Resources

MCASD Collection

Featuring highlights of the Museum’s collection, which includes more than 4,700 works created after 1950, representing a variety of media and genres: painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, video, and installation.

Among the greatest strengths of the MCASD collection are minimalism and Pop Art of the 1960s and 1970s, conceptual art from the 1960s to the present, installation art, art from Latin America, and art from California and the San Diego/Tijuana region.

View Work

MCASD REACT

A mobile museum experience that connects you to our collection with your reactions. REACT offers an opportunity for you to share how art impacts your life. When we look at and experience art there are a number of questions we consider in order to better understand our relationship to the work and the artist.

REACT to work

MCASD is a proud member of Arts Education Resource Organization (AERO)

AERO builds bridges between schools and the arts community, ensuring an arts-inclusive education for all San Diego County students. Providing students with access to engaging, relevant, quality arts education.

Recycled Sculpture

Subjects Areas: Visual and Performing Arts, English-Language Arts, Science
Directed by Teachers or Parent
Grades: 3-5 Duration: 45 minutes

Using recycled materials, students will create a sculpture using additive and subtractive processes.

Self-Portrait

Subjects Areas: Visual and Performing Arts, English-Language Arts Directed by Teachers or Parent
Grades: 3-5
Duration: 90 minutes

A step by step guide to creating a self-portrait using colored pastels. The self-portraits can ve used to write a personal narrative.

California Landscape Mural

Subject Matters: Visual & Performing Arts & History-Social Sciences
Directed by Teachers or Parent
Grades: 4-5
Duration: 90 minutes

Create a collaborative mural of a landscape, incorporating complementary colors and contrast.

Objects as Identity

Subjects Areas: Visual and Performing Arts, English-Language Arts
Directed by Teachers or Parent
Grades: 4-6
Duration: 90 minutes

Inspired by Rochelle Costi's Quartos, students will use one-point perspective to create a drawing of a room that features objects that reveal parts of their identity.
Reference

A Personal Perspective

Subject Matters: Visual & Performing Arts & History-Social Sciences
Self Directed & Directed by Teachers or Parent
Grades: 6-12
Duration: 90 minutes

Inspired by the works featured in Chicanitas: Small Paintings from the Cheech Marin Collection, students will explore and discuss how the artists in the collection were affected by their personal history and create a “me” box, drawing from their own personal backgrounds and life experiences.
Reference

Technology

Subject Matters: Visual Arts
Directed by Teachers or Parent
Grades: 6-12
uration: 120 minutes (could be split into two 60 minute sections)

Inspired by works of contemporary Southern California artists such as Larry Bell and John McCracken, students will use new, nontraditional materials as artistic mediums to analyze the effects of light, space, and surface on their work of art. This lesson plan encourages the discussion of the artistic process and the impact a piece of art has on the surrounding environment.

Mapping Identity

Subject Matters: Visual & Performing Arts & History-Social Sciences
Self Directed & Directed by Teachers or Parent
Grades: 9-12
Duration: 90 minutes

Exploring self-identity through geographic location taking inspiration by American artist Iana Quesnell’s work Triptych: Migration Path, students will distinguish the cultural, political, and social ways in which they relate to their physical surroundings. Students will be able to produce a piece of art that speaks to their individual and collective experiences and identity.
Reference

Tattooing Objects

Subjects Areas: Visual and Performing Arts
Self Directed or Directed by Teachers or Parent
Grades: 9-12
Duration: 2-3 hours

Inspired by the work of Dr. Lakra, an artist featured in MCASD's Viva la Revolución, this lesson plan provides students with the opportunity to layer a tattoo design on a found object of their choice. Students will develop a conversation about the aesthetic value of what is conventionally thought of as a "low" artform.
Reference

Surface and Light

Subject Matters: Visual Arts
Directed by Teachers or Parent
Grades: K-12
Duration: 90 minutes

Using industrial materials, students can experiment with surface and light to create projects inspired by the works featured in Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface. Students can explore light, color, and the quality of their materials, which can include glass and colored tissue paper or more industrious materials.

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