World Art Day

World Art Day (April 15th) is a fantastic opportunity for language teachers to blend language, culture and creativity. Art gives learners an immediate way to connect with other countries and cultures through colour, symbolism and iconic works, long before they need complex grammar. Most importantly, World Art Day shows students that languages aren’t just something learned in a book: they’re a doorway to understanding how people around the world express themselves, see beauty, and tell their stories.

For World Art Day this year, Languagenut have transformed some very famous works of art into a colour by numbers art task in French and Spanish. Perfect for Primary students to practise their colours and numbers!

But there are plenty of other ways to incorporate World Art Day into your lessons. Here are some of our favourite ideas! 

1. “Draw What I Say” Listening Task – Describe a simple picture entirely in the target language (“Draw a big blue circle. Add a small yellow sun…”) and ask pupils to draw what they hear. You can then turn this into a pair speaking activity by getting students to describe pictures to each other.  
2. “Art Gallery Opinions” – Get students to practise opinion phrases with adjectives in response to famous paintings. You could show the paintings on the board or even print off copies and hang them around the classroom for a real gallery feel! 
3. Build an Artwork Using Shapes – Introduce vocabulary on shapes + colours so pupils can create Kandinsky style art using only labelled shapes (un círculo rojo, un cuadrado azul…).