Age/Grade: Middle School

5th-8th Grade,
11-14 Years

Tabletop Graffiti Mural

When an art teacher from a YMCA in Florida decided to clean up her shabby tables and teach her students about graffiti art, she decided to combine the projects and revive the tables with art! A strong emphasis on collaboration and cooperation led to a classroom full of personalized furniture.

Figure Cut-Outs

This fun lesson begins with drawing the figure Haring-style. Experimenting with different poses, students design and create large-size cut-out constructions.

Fence Mural

This ambitious teacher created a fence mural with her students in Sarasota, Florida. Each student's figure drawings becoming full-scale figurative paintings on a bright and bold playground fence.

Drawings & Collage

Sent in by the YMCA in Sarasota, FLorida, this lesson explores the use of multiple figures in the medium of collage.

Signs of Everyday Life

Keith Haring was interested in how signs are used in many different cultures, from Egyptian hieroglyphics to contemporary advertising on the city streets. He often signed his artwork with a "radiant baby" sign instead of his name. This lesson seeks to explore the signs around us, and to create our own.

Sign Language 2 (Found Object Sculpture)

Sign Language 2 picks up where Sign Language 1 leaves off, helping students to develop their symbol three-dimensionally.

Sign Language 1

Students explore signs and vocabulary linked to the work of Keith Haring.

Mural to Music 2

Ask your students to make a collaborative mural drawing to music, using their invented sign language, music, using their invented sign language, music logos, imagination, and their responses to the music.

Mural to Music 1

Ask your students to make a collaborative mural drawing to music, using their invented sign language, their imagination, and their responses to the music.

Hip Hop, Skip, and Jump

This program was designed to be a take-home activity for children in conjunction with the exhibition of Keith Haring's work at the Whitney Museum in New York City.