Art Appreciation - Monet

Week 1: 
Our new art appreciation unit is on my personal favorite artist, Monet. I wasn't planning on studying Monet just yet but we are graced with some of his paintings in a local museum here, so there really is no better time than the present. We started our art appreciation off with reading a book about Monet that my DD found.

Our Monet focus wall - I found two pictures from an old calendar that I had with Impressionists, several post cards that I found in a stationary store here, and some art cards that I printed from the Internet. This will stay up the entire time we study this artist.

J danced to the song about Monet from Hope Harris. J has been loving this music and I appreciate that the songs are about real artists and their art work.

J put the Monet puzzle together from Confessions of a Homeschooler's art study.

I found this awesome art app called Play Art which lets you make your own "paintings" using elements from several artists. It currently only has about five artists (some which we will be studying) but it is super cute. J is "painting" like Monet and she can save her painting in her "museum." I purchased it for $.99 and it was worth it. So far she has painted like Van Gogh, Monet, Klee.

J drew water lilies with oil pastels and then painted the water using water colors.

She used different colors like Monet did in painting her water - blues, greens, purples, yellows.

Her finished Water Lilies creation. I love how she used all of the colors to paint her water. We then watched Classical Baby - The Art Show. This dvd is super cute and I lucked out by finding it in a Goodwill for about $4. I bought all the titles and I have not been disappointed. This dvd uses classical music to explore paintings of several artists for young children. It has one chapter on Monet's Water Lilies with a mommy and baby frogs swimming in the water among the lilies.

Week 2:

We began our art study looking through an Eyewitness book on Monet. My DD found it in her school library. It is a very detailed book on a high reading level, so we just looked at the pictures and discussed some of the details. We listened to the song - she seems to like this music.

Our next project was to create another painting based on Monet's works - The Water Lily Pond. What you don't see here is that we created a bridge from masking tape and then painted over it.

When it dries, the tape will be removed and a bridge will be revealed. I believe this turned out to be a pretty good impressionistic painting for a kindergartner.

Week 3:
We are bringing our Monet study to a close. Since we were unable to visit the museum during the holiday, I am hoping to do it soon. Our last project was to make some fall trees Monet style.

I gave J some brown paper and had her cut and glue tree trunks. Then I gave her q-tips and a handy brush made from a foam sheet to make her leaves. She was very precise in where her leaves were going. Kaleb is always so upset when I don't let him do what J is doing, so I let him paint as well.

I made his trees and let him have a paint brush. I tried my hardest to contain the paint and let him explore. He painted his hand, brushed my arm (by accident), but for the most part, kept it on the table. He was so happy that he could paint like J.

Here are J's Monet trees

and Kaleb's trees.

And I didn't end up with paint everywhere. Everyone wins! I am trying to get the tot involved more in our artists endeavors but it can be scary. So we are finished with Monet and our next artist will be Jackson Pollack. This should get interesting.

As always, I hope that this art study encourages you to "do art" with your children. I have included some links for inspiration.

Links

The Crafty Classroom the idea for the bridge resist painting came from here.

Confessions of a Homeschooler has the free art study of The World's Greatest Artists. This is where I found the puzzle and she has so many great resources.

Living Life Intentionally has a great project using tissue paper and paint for Monet's Water Lilies.

Toddler Approved the idea for the Monet inspired fall trees came from here. She also has a tutorial on how to make the brush using a foam sheet.

We Heart Art I found the idea of the pastel resist Water Lily project here. She used tissue paper lilies.