Friday, January 26, 2018

Preschool: Learning through Art

Text: Preschool Learning through art; children's preschool paintings

drawing of a bird

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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.

Learning About Art class logoThere 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.

John James Audubon, Flamingo, Bald Eagle written on a white board

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. 


drawing a bird

 On another day, we painted flamingos after reviewing about how to make the color pink.
mixing red and white to make pink paint

mixing paint to make 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.

Flamingo paintingpainting a flamingo


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.

flamingo and eagle books


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.

tepee art

 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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6 comments:

  1. What fun art projects! And I love that your kids are being introduced to "serious" art like Audubon and Marc at a young age. :-)

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    1. Thank you. They loved my Claude Monet art book so I figured why not look at more - and the SchoolhouseTeachers.com lessons is perfect.

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  2. Excellent art projects. Good use of schoolhouseteachers

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    1. Thanks! I love how easy it is to tailor the classes to my children's needs (even at this young age).

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  3. Fun ideas! We LOVE crafts in this house!

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