Before our trip to the National Gallery we:
--looked at all Mommy, It's a Renoir cards of paintings in the National Gallery. Discussed Impressionism (French and a little American) and post-Impressionism
--lifted images from the NGA website to load as a slideshow on the computer
--played Art Lotto
--asked Michelle R for her scavenger hunt using Mommy, It's a Renior cards
Picture Books
--Mike Venezia books nonfiction--picture book level with some funny illustrations and lots of art images. Mike Venezia also has series about composers and presidents
--Camille and the Sunflowers (Van Gogh) (there is a series called Anholt's artists) --picture book level with an engaging story
--Jonkonnu (Winslow Homer) --picture book level with an engaging story
--Marie in Fourth Postion (Degas) --picture book level with an engaging story. One photo of sculpture on back jacket
--Chasing Vermeer (Vermeer) and others in this Blue Belliott series --haven't checked these out yet, but they sound good Age 9-12 reading level
--Jazz by Henri Matisse--He says that the words are for visual effect which is good because besides the fact that they are in French, I don't like what they have to say. Listening to Louis Armstrong while we looked at some of the pictures made both the book and Jazz make more sense.
--Gallery Ghost--we've had near fistfights over this book that I bought at the museum yesterday. It encourages the kids to look carefully at different works in the "what is different between these two pictures" style but the differences must then be traced back to their original works of art. Comes with an attached magnifier and score sheet (spares available to print from a website). I already want to buy the one about a museum in England: Art Fraud Detective.
Movies
--Mike Venezia--silly like the books, but the information is solid (if you can hear it above the sound of children's laughter) and there are tons of images that the kids recognized later. The images are shown a second time with titles and artist and location as the credits scroll around them.
Projects
--Art Packs--these are really only good for one or two children to use at a time, but they come with little books, and you can sometimes adjust the activities for larger groups. I bought a couple of these to try.
--Discovering Great Artists by Marianne Kohl--this book gives projects in different art styles. It provides recipes, level of difficulty, time to prepare, time to do craft. Better if you are doing bigger groups, but most projects are too much for my younger kids. We haven't tried this yet so I'm excited to see how it works.
--History timeline A quick way to record some of what they've learned. The boys are going to do a timeline entry on each of the different artists and art schools we've studied. I bought small stickers at Dover to put on their timeline pages.
