10 Books to Introduce Your Kids to Art

We did a slow-down week this week.  Our schedule was messed up by memorial day and Zachary caught a cold from somewhere so we needed something that wasn’t too intense.

THANKFULLY it was INTRODUCTION TO CLASSIC ART week!  It probably would have been more fun with a NON-Sick kid, but it was still pretty awesome anyway, and I got to look at a ton of Monet and Van Gogh, so I was pretty happy.

How I did it!

Basically, on the way home from the library, I had him take the “The Art Book for Children” And just LOOK at the art in it.  At first, he just flipped through the pages and said that it was boring (my first clue that something was going wrong this week).  So I had him look at each piece of art for at least 10 seconds.   (Apparently 10 seconds is a REALLY long time for a 5 year old) I counted for him and then asked questions about the art.  (It was a bit of a quiz for me too!  I got to see if I could figure out which piece he was looking at just by his descriptions.)

Then he had to tell me if there was anything he liked about the art.   I figured he would like Jackson Pollock’s art, but he picked Bridget Riley.  He loved that the pictures started to move if he looked at them long enough.  Definitely cool.  He also thought that I would like the Mona Lisa.  He was right.

When we were done with that, we picked a different artist every day and either read a book about him or her OR we looked at more pictures of their art online.  I wish we could have taken a trip to LACMA…. but sick kids = not so much on the field trip.  Very sad for me.

 

Coloring Pages Link

After we had looked at all the art, I would print out a bunch of the coloring pages from “Making Art Fun”  Its a great website with coloring pages, word searches, and LOTS of info about classic artists.

Zachary wasn’t up for it, but its in my “resources to be used later” folder in my HS binder.  I’m hoping he will remember the different artists when we go to color the pages.

BOOKS

 

The Art Book for Children

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This one was a great intro for us.  Its the one we looked at in the car, by the time we got home, he wanted to see some more of the art from specific artists.

An Eye For Art

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This book was REALLY fun to read. The pictures were beautiful.  I don’t normally comment on this, but the material the pages were made out of was perfect for this sort of book.  They were semi-glossy and it made it really easy to let Zachary just explore the book without worrying about him damaging the pages at all.  It explored a lot of the different techniques, classic artists, and time periods.  We skipped between this one and the Art Book for Children.

How to Draw Cartoon Reptiles

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This one stemmed from the previous week about geckos.  For some reason, my son doesn’t think that drawing should count as “art” for our homeschool subjects, but he did enjoy drawing the gecko.  I need to take a picture of it. This is actually part of a whole series of “how to draw” books.  If your kid isn’t into reptiles, I’m sure they have one on anything your small person might like.  There were cars and trucks, airplanes, mammals, sports, just EVERYTHING you could think of!  Its a great series to introduce your kids to drawing.

Other Books We used to study Specific Artists…. There’s a lot so I’m just gonna list them!

In the Time of Michelangelo

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Rembrandt

(getting to know the world’s greatest artists)Unknown-3

Van Gogh

Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists 

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Degas

Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists

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Degas: The Invisible Eye

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Action Jackson

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Salvador Dali

(artists in their time)

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