4 Ways to Integrate Visual Arts Into Elementary Math

Integrating visual arts into elementary math lessons can transform the learning experience, combining creativity with problem-solving. Arts integration can make math concepts more accessible and engaging for students, offering a hands-on approach that fosters deeper understanding. Below are four arts-based activities designed to bring math to life in the elementary classroom.

Many of Andy Warhol’s pop art pieces, like his Campbell’s Soup Cans from 1962, can be used to teach multiplication arrays. Students can create their own arrays, picking an image or drawing one of their own, and build multiplication problems based on the repetition in the artwork.

Classic works like Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 painting The Starry Night contain myriad shapes that younger students can find and identify. Elements like the stars, the moon, and the swirls can be highlighted and defined. This activity gets students to recognize and name shapes in the world around them. 

Students can also explore the symmetry (or lack thereof) in artworks like Frida Kahlo’s 1939 painting The Two Fridas, in which two versions of the artist sit across from one another in mirrored poses but differing clothing. Since many works of art feature elements of symmetry but don’t match perfectly, they can spark a conversation in the classroom about the definition of symmetry and how it manifests in life and in math problems.  

Counting and one-to-one correspondence can both be taught using the works of artists like Pablo Picasso or Piet Mondrian. Students can count shapes in their art, identifying the number of rectangles, for instance, or the number of shapes of a certain color.

The ideas for many of these strategies arose from writer and teacher Heather Sanderell’s visits to her local art museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art. Rather than taking a field trip with her math class to the museum, she utilized the institution’s online exhibitions to bring the art into the classroom—encouraging her students to connect the two seemingly disparate subjects of art and math, while boosting their understanding of both. Find more ideas on integrating fine art into the elementary math classroom in Sanderell’s article for Edutopia, “Pythagoras and Picasso: Integrating Math and Art in the Classroom.” 

Campbell’s Soup Cans graphic interpretation created in 2024 by Edutopia. Original Andy Warhol artwork © 2025 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.