Preschool: Learning through Art

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One of my children's favorite activities during the day is when we color, draw, or paint. After giving them a copy of a book which includes paintings by the Impressionist artist Claude Monet, I decided we could venture beyond just the basic arts and crafts that we had been doing.  So in addition to the crafts we have continued using together, I have started using Learning About Art from SchoolhouseTeachers.com.

There are a series of 10 lessons that focus upon such artists as John James Audubon, Albert Bierstadt, Grant Wood, and Franz Marc.  Included in each lesson are instructions for drawing simple designs, animals, and such with your children.  I admit I really like that the steps are laid out because I do not consider myself a great artist.

The first lesson is A is for Audubon.

We talked about the artist John James Audubon and several of the birds he painted including flamingos, crows, and bald eagles, as well as the letter A.

My four year-old son and I drew one of the birds in the lesson together. This is one of the reasons why I really like the course Learning About Art: there are step-by-step guides to drawing pictures. 

 On another day, we painted flamingos after reviewing about how to make the color pink.

I think my daughter's favorite part was mixing the paint. 

I simply searched for pictures of flamingos to print out for them to paint. If they were a bit older, I would have asked them to draw their own pictures to paint.

In addition to the material provided by the author of the course, Sharon Jeffus, we picked out some books from the library to extend our lessons.

The next lesson is B is for Bierstadt, Buffalo, Bears, and Butterflies.

We talked about landscape paintings and looked at some images of the Rocky Mountains (both paintings and photographs). Following along with the lesson, we talked about and drew different buildings, including a tepee.

 We used my daughter's new Kwik Stix to paint our tepee pictures.  (They work really great for fast projects. I discuss them more in my Painting with Kwik Stix blog.)

As part of the second lesson, we also drew a buffalo and butterflies.



To extend our lesson of butterflies, we read See How They Grow: Butterfly and created our own life cycle of a butterfly craft.

One of my favorite parts of these courses from SchoolhouseTeachers.com is that I can extend them with more materials and information when my children show interest. And one of my favorite things about art is that you can combine it with so many other subjects like mathematics, history, science, and language arts.

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