Art sub plans
Four lessons you can leave for a substitute, each one page to print and each needing nothing but pencils. Timed, sorted by grade band, and every sheet is on this site already.
Curated by 
Willa Fern
What makes a good art sub plan?
It has to work without you in the room. That means one page to photocopy, materials that are already in the drawer, an instruction a substitute can read aloud without knowing the subject, and a visible finishing point so the class knows when it is done.
Lesson 1: shapes into an animal (45 minutes, grades K to 3)
Print the step worksheet for one animal, one per child. Ask the class to name the two shapes the drawing starts from before anyone picks up a pencil, which takes about five minutes and is the part that actually teaches. They then copy the six steps into the first box and draw it again from memory in the second box, with the steps covered. Early finishers take a second animal.
Lesson 2: the grid (45 minutes, grades 3 to 6)
Print the grid worksheet. The rule is one square at a time and no looking at the whole picture, which is hard to obey and worth enforcing for the first ten minutes. Anyone who finishes the enlargement early can rule their own four by four grid on plain paper and copy something from the room.
Lesson 3: value and form (50 minutes, grades 4 and up)
Print the shading worksheet. Work the value scale together on the board first, because a class left to do it alone will produce five nearly identical greys. The four solids at the bottom are the assessment: a child who shades the sphere with the light coming from the stated direction has understood it.
Lesson 4: perspective (50 minutes, grades 5 and up)
Print the one point perspective worksheet. Point out that the guide lines on the worked box are still visible and that this is deliberate. The lower half has the horizon and vanishing point already printed, so nobody spends the lesson ruling lines. Three boxes is the target; the neatness of the third is the mark.
If you only have ten minutes
Print the draw and write paper or a symmetry sheet. Both are self explanatory from the page itself, need no board work and no materials beyond a pencil, which is what a genuine emergency cover lesson requires.