These lessons about french decorative arts were designed for elementary and secondary teachers and include related visual-arts and language-arts content standards. In the Image Bank you will find additional suggested questions and activities for use with the images that can be adapted to different grade levels and particular classrooms.

Lessons 1–7 of 7

Looking at French Decorative Arts: Tick-Tock, Bedroom Clock
Grades/Level: Lower Elementary (K–2)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English—Language Arts, Mathematics, Music
Lesson Overview: Students will identify the colors, animals, animals' actions, and natural and manmade items depicted on a decorative clock made in the 1700s. They will memorize a song, practice telling time, and create their own decorated clock.

Looking at French Decorative Arts: A Tapestry Fit for a King
Grades/Level: Upper Elementary (3–5)
Subjects: Visual Arts
Lesson Overview: Students will examine and discuss the tapestry Chariot of Triumph and its symbols and create their own personal symbols for their own tapestry design.

Looking at French Decorative Arts: Appropriate and Innovate
Grades/Level: Upper Elementary (3–5)
Subjects: Visual Arts
Lesson Overview: Students will analyze the form and function of a table made in the 1700s. They will appropriate elements from a preexisting work of art to create a new work of art that reflects the students' identity.

Looking at French Decorative Arts: Symbols in Marquetry
Grades/Level: Upper Elementary (3–5)
Subjects: Visual Arts
Lesson Overview: Students will study a French cabinet and research and discuss its symbols. Students will then create their own marquetry design based on an animal symbol from another country.

Looking at French Decorative Arts: Makers of Nothing, Sellers of Everything
Grades/Level: Middle School (6–8)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English—Language Arts
Lesson Overview: Students will imagine that they are an 18th-century marchand-mercier, or salesman, and will write a persuasive letter to sell a French bed, the Lit à la Polonaise, along with other bedroom furnishings for a client.

Looking at French Decorative Arts: The Science of Good Design
Grades/Level: High School (9–12)
Subjects: Visual Arts
Lesson Overview: Students will discuss the style and function of an 18th-century compound microscope and its case and then design their own modern scientific or technological instrument.

Looking at French Decorative Arts: The Quest for Porcelain
Grades/Level: High School (9–12)
Subjects: History—Social Science, Science
Lesson Overview: Research activities investigate social-science connections such as trade, societal impact, and style on the production and consumption of porcelain in the period leading up to the French Revolution. Extensions relate to chemistry connections.

Lessons 1–7 of 7