Unit Plan 10 (Grade 3 Art): Mood Through Color
Grade 3 art unit where students analyze warm and cool colors to show mood, create color studies, and explain how value and brightness affect feeling.
Focus: Analyze how color choices create mood in artworks and student color studies.
Grade Level: 3
Subject Area: Art (Visual Arts • Responding/Creating)
Total Unit Duration: 1–3 weeks, 50–60 minutes per session
I. Introduction
In this unit, students explore how color can make an artwork feel happy, calm, excited, or sad. They learn about warm and cool colors, light and dark values, and how bright or dull colors can change the feeling of a picture. By looking closely at artworks and creating simple color studies, students practice using art vocabulary to describe mood and begin to make intentional color choices in their own work.
Essential Questions
- How can color change the way an artwork feels?
- What kinds of moods do warm colors and cool colors usually create?
- How do light and dark (value) or bright and dull colors affect mood?
- How can I use color words to explain how an artwork makes me feel and why?
II. Objectives and Standards
Learning Objectives — Students will be able to:
- Identify warm and cool colors and describe how they can affect the mood of an artwork.
- Use art vocabulary (bright, dull, light, dark) to describe how color choices create different feelings.
- Analyze several example artworks and explain how color helps create mood, emphasis, or structure.
- Create simple color mood studies (small color-only designs) to show at least two different moods using color choices.
- Reflect on their own color studies and describe how they used color to create a specific mood.
Standards Alignment — 3rd Grade (NCAS-Aligned)
- VA:Re7.3a — Analyze how elements of art create mood, emphasis, and structure.
- Example: Students explain how warm colors create excitement.
Success Criteria — Student Language
- I can tell which colors are warm and which are cool.
- I can describe an artwork’s mood using color words like bright, dark, warm, and cool.
- I can explain how color choices help make an artwork feel happy, calm, excited, or sad.
- I can create small color studies that show different moods on purpose.
- I can talk about how my color choices create mood in my own work.