
#3: Good Health & Well-Being
What does good health and well-being even mean?
How can we learn about this goal through art?
What does good health and well-being look like?
Find out:
Watch this clip to learn about what good health looks like and why your well-being is so important.
While you are watching and listening you might like to think about these questions.
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What do the words health and well-being mean?
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Can you translate these words into another language?
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What causes people to live to live in poor health
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What causes poor health? What are some of the effects?
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Understanding Goal 3: Good Health & Well-Being (primary)


Where to start?
Thinking about how to link artworks relating to good health and well-being that make sense to our primary school student audience wasn't as easy as I had initially thought. After some research I have broken this down into 4 main areas.
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A. Healthy Food & Medicine
B. Healthy Lifestyle-sport & sleep
C. Mental Health and Well-Being
D. Corona Virus related Art
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In this section you will find some starting points, resources and artist names to get you going.
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A. Healthy Food & Medicine
There are unlimited examples of art showing fruits, vegetables, still life and healthy foods. There are also some wonderful examples of the connection between art and science, in particular medicine.
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​Try using some search terms online such as:
· healthy food paintings
· artworks that show healthy food
· healthy lifestyle art
· art medicine
· art & germs
· health paintings
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https://fineartamerica.com/art/paintings/healthy+eating
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https://www.companyofpainters.com/blog/medical-art/
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Medical & Art Collaboration
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https://news.usc.edu/156159/medical-research-art-keck-medicine-usc/
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​B. Healthy Lifestyle-sport & sleep
Why not start with art made in connection with the Olympic Games?
https://olympics.com/ioc/the-olympic-foundation-for-culture-and-heritage/arts-and-culture
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Search Terms:
· sport shown through art
· athletes and art
· artworks about sport
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Art & Sport
Edgar Degas (French Artist)
The Dance Class 1873
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Who is Edgar Degas? Tate Modern Gallery
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Alberto Giacometti (Swiss artist)
Who is Alberto Giacometti? Tate Gallery for kids
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Teacher resources here-Guggenheim Museum
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Sleep & Dreams
Surrealist Art Movement
Tate Kids-What is Surrealism?
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Salvador Dali (Spanish Artist)
The Persistence of Memory, 1931
The Temptation of St.Anthony, 1946
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Henri Rousseau (French Artist)
The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897
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​​Frida Kahlo (Mexican Artist)
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More Resources
C. Mental Health and Well-Being
Part of SDG # 3 is talking about and understanding mental health, which is about our feelings and thoughts.
When we think about making artwork relating to mental health we can think about all the wonderful artworks made in the world that express different emotions.
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Meet Riley's Emotions
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Talking About & Understanding what Mental Health is all about
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D. Corona Virus related Art
Try with some research online.
Search terms:
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coronavirus art
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art through Covid
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creative covid art
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art competitions during Covid
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Article: Covid-19: Artist honours 'life on the line' NHS workers at Tate Liverpool
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In pictures: children around the world display their lockdown art
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HOW STREET ARTISTS AROUND THE WORLD ARE REACTING TO LIFE WITH COVID-19
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There has been an incredible amount of artwork made over the last year related to Covid, from professional to beginner artists and many students have been able to express their experiences of living in a pandemic through art.
Some starting points might be to look at these collections of images and to use the Visual Thinking Strategy, I see, I think, I wonder to start a discussion about how real life can be reflected through artwork. Artworks also tell an audience what was happening historically in any given time.
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More Artists
Art Idea:
Drawing & Painting Still Life
A. Healthy Food & Medicine
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Use any traditional still life painting as inspiration for lessons in observation, drawing and painting fruit and vegetables.
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Printmaking
You can also use fruits and vegetables for printmaking, by
experimenting with making patterns and textures using chopped up fruit and vegetables (next time I will be sure to ask my school kitchen for items that are about to expire). Apple, lemon, orange, corn, broccoli, carrot, celery and lotus work well.
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Gyotaku Fish Prints also work incredibly well and these videos are a great provocation to discuss sustainability and animal rights. My students have made fish prints before using fish (scales must still be on) with printmaking ink, and printed on tissue paper or watercolour paper worked really well (although this method is not exactly sustainable).
NB: Some art companies do offer plastic models to use instead (dickblick) or (Enasco).
This is also A GREAT PROJECT FOR SDG # 14 Life Below Water
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B. Healthy Lifestyle-sport & sleep
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Looking at the human body in motion is an excellent way to connect health and art together.
Students can make wire, clay or paper mache sculptures or re create sports figures using aluminium foil or pipe cleaners./
Find out about Alberto Giacometti and Edgar Degas's work in the section above.
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Art Idea: Collage,
Self-Portraits & Microscope Art
Student can make fantastic examples of what 'being healthy' might look like, by creating magazine, clip art or photograph collages.
These can be made by hand but tend to be very time consuming.
Using an app like Pic Collage or the fantastic iPad app- PICTOBOLDO can help top make artworks quickly and also allow them to look more professional.
C. Mental Health and Well-Being

Self-Portraits & Emotions
Students can also explore making a collage to represent one emotion or contrasting emotions.
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They could also creating drawings and paintings to show different emotions or people or animals
Making self-portraits of students depicting a certain emotion or contrasting two different emotions would also link SDG 3 with art.
A trick with self-portraits is to take photos of your students first.
Next we place tracing paper or baking paper over the top of their photo and secure it with masking tape (on a window in direct sunlight is best). We then have them trace over the main lines of their faces using pencil or black pen.
Now it is time to photocopy the 'traced version' onto watercolour paper and use that as our base. This means the student's work will really look like them and is a helpful way to scaffold students portrait work.




D. Corona Virus related Art
Another great art lesson is to look at cells under microscopes and then draw/ paint them.
We used some pre- made cell slides of plants and blood cells. We also tried to make our own slides and found thin slices of celery and leaves that we'd scratched a little bit worked best. We were able to borrow basic microscopes from our fabulous science teacher Kim Gillingham who is the creator of Drop Thoughts.
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Student were fascinated to look closely at cells as well as slices of plants, fruits and vegetables.
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​We used watercolour pencils and watercolour paint to create final pieces.



Describe your image

Art Idea:
Art Meets Science
Human Body created in the style of a famous artist
This body project is one of my absolute favourites that I came up with a very long time ago (unfortunately these photos of my student's artwork do not do them justice at all).
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First, we learnt all about the human body and the interactions and connections between body systems.
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Then we learnt how to draw the internal body organs one by one and looked at art by Leonardo da Vinci and the placement of where body organs are actually located in our bodies.
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Students chose any well-known artist they wanted and explored what elements actually make up that artist's style, for example Piet Mondrian's style is well known for his use of horizontal and vertical lines, primary colours and abstract style.
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Students then had the tricky task of applying their artist's style onto each body part.
Our assessment was a pretty powerful but simple one, can you look at your friend's artwork and guess which artist they chose?



C. Germs & Sculpture
Many years ago when working in Italy I discovered the strange material Play Mais.
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Working with a year 1 class we studied germs and the beauty of them along with different diseases before building germ sculptures using play mais, water and toothpicks.
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This is a great lesson for
SDG #6 Clean Water and Sanitation as well.
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Students can also make giant paper mache or recycled material sculptures of a healthy food.


Taking Action
Here is a list of ideas from the Good Life Goals that can help you to take action on goal #3.
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Taking Action
Where do I start?
New Ideas & Resources
Coming soon!