5 Back to School Art Sub Plans - Name Designs

Five Art Sub Plans for Back to School - Name Designs

Preparing for the first week of school can feel like the pits. I will admit to being someone who often waited until rather late to start doing those back to school lesson plans. And if you have to write art sub lessons for that first week back, that's just the worst!

I've looked around for some lessons online to help you with that. And I looked for ones where the planning has mostly been done for you.

Name designs are some of the first lessons I like to do because they can be used on the cover of student portfolios or hung as bulletin boards.

1.  Fully Prepared Art Sub Plan in my TpT Shop  

I'll start with an art sub plan that I have just finished creating for my TpT shop. 

It has all the instructions, visuals, dialog, and examples that you need to print out and hand right to a sub. It'd also be a good one to put right in your emergency sub plan folder.

There are options for how the students may complete it. They can do it in black and white with patterns.

They can do it in color with patterns.

For differentiation or for primary grades, you might choose to do it just with color and no patterns.

Here's where you find this lesson:  TpT Shop: Art Sub Lessons - Name Designs

2.  YouTube Lesson for 6th Grade 

Now, if you prefer to have your older kids, maybe 6th graders, watch a video lesson, check out this one from Mrs. Thiele.  Here's the address for that one:  6th Grade Portfolio Cover Name Design

She has them use Zentangle type patterns in their name design.

3.  Easy Lessons that Need a Few More Instructions

The Incredible Art Dept. has multiple ideas for name design lessons. They are a little thin on the written instructions, but you could probably write them up without too much trouble.

Here are some other blog posts that I have written about name design lessons that you could use with a sub. 

Name People is a lesson that I found on Artsonia, for third graders.

4.  Middle School Abstract Name Design

This one is an abstract name design for middle school students.  Abstract Name Designs as Middle School Art Sub Plans

5.  Radial Name Design 

This blog post shows you a little about a radial design for names. 

This one, at the Seoul Mates blog, also shows the idea of a name written in a radial design, but a little differently.

Again, if you want to just buy one that is already prepared and ready to hand to a sub, check this one out at my TpT shop.  Back to School Name Design. 

Back to School Art Sub Plans

Easy Substitute Lesson Plans for Art

Don't be caught off guard without sub plans when school starts up again. Whether you are putting together your art sub folder, sub tub, emergency sub lesson folder or planning for a long term substitute teacher, prepare early!!!  You will be so glad that you did.

Simple Lesson Plans

I have collected some links to complete lesson plans that are simple enough to be used as sub plans for the beginning of the school year.

Patterned Hand

This patterned hand drawing and the downloadable PDF instructions for it can be found here:  The Bonifas Art Center

In my opinion, this sort of lesson, one with little patterns and details, work better for upper elementary and middle school. I believe that younger kids would make quick work out of the patterning.

I do think you could expand on this a bit by filling up the space on the paper with overlapping hands.

Heroic Figures and Folk Tales

This "Art To Go" packet, from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, includes artwork and activities. Kids may write and/or draw about heroes with step by step help from the authors. There are pages...."packets"....to download with clear directions. You may pick and choose what you want your sub to use. 

You will need to print out some things for this lesson.

Medieval Beasts and Bestiaries

Here’s a complete lesson from the Met.  Well, complete except for some illustrations. I found this accompanying beast by searching “public domain medieval animals mixed.”  Medieval Beasts and Bestiaries But there are full and complete instructions at that link.

Kindergarten and Preschool Art Lesson Plan

This is an easy to teach lesson that I have used for kindergarteners and preschoolers as a back-to-school lesson. I usually cut 12" x 18" into simple school bus shapes. After showing the students photos of many familiar and crazy-looking buses, I let them design their own. We also watched lots of videos about buses and sang "The Wheels on the Bus."

As a sub lesson, I would either leave the cut out bus shapes for the sub or a printed out outline of a bus that is included in the following sub plan.

If you would like to buy a PowerPoint of this lesson all ready to be used, you can buy it here, at my Teachers Pay Teachers shop. Here's a comment left by someone who purchased the lesson: Everything included that is needed to do this lesson which makes it so nice. I've added this to my sub-tub on a flash drive due to the completeness of the product. I really appreciate the attention to details for this product.

Here’s another one in my TpT shop that I would, without a doubt, put in an art sub folder. Print this one out for the school office, and you can teach it to any grade, K-6.  Click here to see this one:  Silly Sandwich Art Sub Plan

This one is complete with instructions and visuals. It is no prep and uses only paper and crayons or markers. It is a winner! Here are some reviews from this one:  

“ I used this for a day I had a sick child at home and had to come up with a last-minute sub art lesson. This was a lifesaver! Thank you!”

“ I left this for a sub and the kids LOVED it. They ask to revisit this project frequently. ”

I have many art sub plans in my shop called……Art Sub Lessons! Here’s a link: Art Sub Lessons - TpT Shop. Go shopping for some sub plans and save yourself a lot of headaches!