Don't Try This at Home

I feel fortunate to live in a city where toddler art classes are easy to come by. I can let my daughter explore art materials without worrying about covering my entire kitchen in a drop-cloth. I think introducing kids to art history first starts with introducing them to creating art. This is my daughter at 19 months:

She became more and more comfortable painting on mural paper, exploring with trucks, combs, and dinosaurs in the paint, and stamping with all kinds of objects. Only 5 months later - I took this picture on her 2nd birthday:

She's an addict. If you haven't read the book, "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More," by Karen Beaumont, I highly recommend it (not only because it describes my girl perfectly!). http://www.amazon.com/Notable-Childrens-Books-Younger-Readers/dp/0152024883 

But now she's 3, and we do try more at home. My must-haves: Large mural paper, a great smock with arms (the apron-style are definitely not enough for us), and yes, a drop cloth. No matter how thick the paper is, paint will go through onto the dining room table without one. (Kids love to layer. I repeat to my young elementary students as they layer and mix in the same area until the paper starts to fall apart: "That looks great - now focus on the part of the paper has no paint!") I love Mimi the Sardine Spillmats: http://www.amazon.com/Mimi-Sardine-Spillmat-Design-Green/dp/B003724VAS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1299290916&sr=8-1

My Little Jackson Pollock

We spend time in New Hampshire every winter, and this winter it's been c-o-l-d. We haven't been out skiing as much as we'd like, but we have been staying busy up there and going outside in between hot chocolate breaks. One great, easy outside snow painting idea - spray bottles. Fill them with food coloring or liquid water colors and add water, and then squirt, squirt, squirt. My daughter loves this!

It looks a lot like a Jackson Pollock painting. When we got back home, we were looking through an art book (we have some on the coffee table and she's always browsing through them), and I pointed at a Pollock and said, "This reminds me of something you did!" It was a nice reversal of creating art inspired by an artist. Full disclosure: we did have some help from 4-month-old puppy Bode:

Land of Landscapes

My second and third graders been studying landscapes of all kinds, and the "tricks" artists use to make a painting look more realistic - or how, as one of my students said, to make a 3-D image on 2-D paper. We looked at many well-known landscape paintings, while we discussed and identified the "landscape terms" we've learned - foreground, middleground, background, horizon line, and perspective. They were able to point out techniques artists used - colors and objectsare darker and larger in the foreground, and lines of a road came together and met at the horizon line. Then, using an idea I modified from one of my favorite websites - http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/ - they created their own "rolling hill" landscapes below:

Drawing Connections

As a former classroom teacher, I was really passionate about connecting subjects together. I never liked the "Time for history, close your science book" philosophy. I would begin Language Arts time by saying, "Wow! We're on page 115! Let's figure out what percentage of the book we've read!" Or I'd come up with vocabulary words that connected to history lessons. At that time, my students had American Sign Language as a "special." I loved that we classroom teachers gave the ASL teacher the kids' spelling words to practice their signing alphabets. I think the more teachers show the interconnections between subjects and concepts, the more kids will find on their own. My students found and made many more connections than I could plan for - as long as you're looking, you'll find them. Seeing this application of knowledge is, for me, the most rewarding part of teaching. This is especially important today, as some question why we teach long division (there are calculators!), cursive (who doesn't type everything?), or have spelling tests (um, spell check?). Teaching is about teaching kids how to learn. And, I think, about how to make connections.

How does this apply to art? Art is everywhere we look! Maybe it's as simple as asking, "What does this remind you of?" or coming home from a museum and having your child draw his favorite object. Maybe it's looking in a picture book and talking about the colors - the same ones you saw in the sunset the day before. So many possibilities here...

Van Gogh Finish-the-Landscape

My 4th and 5th grade Art Historians have been studying landscapes, and we've been looking at a lot of Van Gogh's. This tied in really nicely with color theory - a topic we'd been discussing in art. While Van Gogh used paint, my students used oil pastels to better mimic his style. The color-matching was something I stressed - as well as the direction of his brush strokes and the layering of color. This isn't a new idea for art class - but I had to share because it's a wonderful use of old calendars, and I think the students did a remarkable job!

ABCs of VTS

VTS, or Visual Teaching Strategies, is seemingly the simplest strategy I've ever come across. After all, it is three straight-forward questions:

1. What's going on in this picture?
2. What do you see that makes you say that?
3. What more can we find?

That's it. No deviation. Developed by a cognitive psychologist and a museum educator and their colleagues, this strategy of engaging students in art - asking those three questions - has been researched, studied, and analyzed for 20 years. To learn more about it, check out the amazing resource http://www.vtshome.org/

So why/when/how? I've found these questions to be incredibly useful when introducing children to art objects, but also in other areas of my life. The idea is, as I said, simple: the facilitator first gives the viewers time to really look at an object, and then asks question #1. Someone in the group (ideally under 10 people) begins the dialogue, and others continue. Question #2 is my favorite. It helps to draw kids back into the work when they're going down a long, winding road that may involve their own dog's recent trip to the vet (meaning, comments that have very little to do with the artwork). I often ask my 3-year-old question #2 when she's pointing out something in a picture book and then diving into a story or thought - and I am amazed at her responses. This idea of providing "evidence" is a great pre-reading and reading comprehension skill. As for Question #3, it's easy for all of us to get stuck on a tangent, or for a group to discuss the same thing in circles. This is a way of saying "Let's look deeper," or, "Ok, what else."

What do I like about VTS? It's super simple once you learn how to use it. It's easy to implement. But it's  actually more complex and more interesting that I've indicated here. The facilitator of the group discussion summarizes each comment and links comments together, while remaining neutral and encouraging discussion. (There are week-long workshops!) Check out the website. And then start asking your kids, "What's going on in this picture?"

Why Art History?

I didn't major in art history, and I certainly didn't ever plan to incorporate it into childrens' lives. But I've found "studying" art can be a really fun and meaningful learning experience with and for kids. Whether it involves taking your kids to an art museum, creating art inspired by an artist, using a time period in art history as a springboard for examining other historical events, or playing around on http://www.googleartproject.com/ (it's amazing), these experiences lead children to create meaning and develop critical thinking skills. As a mom, a teacher, and a museum educator, I've seen how kids react to "recreating" their own versions of "Starry Night," to seeing a John Singleton Copley painting in class and then "discovering" it at the museum two months later (shrieking), to understanding a reference made by an adult ("That was surreal"). It can be surreal. I am amazed by what even my 3-year-old learns and retains and connects every day. Incorporating art and art history into kids' lives - at home and at school - is fun and easy to do!