A Summer of Art For Kids

Week 2: Frida Kahlo

• Drawing Faces
• Understanding symbolism
• Frida’s culture

Scroll to bottom of post for detailed weekly Art schedule.

Despite my grandparents dragging me through art museum after art museum as a child, I was never taught how to enjoy art. Instead I took endless classes on the technical acts of it throughout my lifetime.  Art History is a class, that as I grow older, I wish I had taken in college, but up until attending the incredibly enlightening Christopher Moore book reading of Sacre Bleu in the spring of 2012, I held zero interest.

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My oldest daughter has a great passion for expressing herself through colors and design and I’m always looking for any avenue that may help to build and possibly accelerate her slightly delayed cognitive development.   When looking for lesson plan ideas for the exploration of the human body I discovered one of the hundreds of educational resources provided by Crayola.  Visit Crayola!

If you were not aware we are card-carrying Crayola fanatics.  And this sea of free resources and inspirations that  flowed from their website turned into a rabbit hole that lured me far beyond the realms of the human anatomy.   It became an obsession, I spent two entire days devouring each and every lesson plan they provided on their site, pinning and organizing the ones I may want to use throughout the summer.

Many of the lesson plans were categorized by famous artists, some I was incredibly familiar with, some I had never heard of before.  This was perfect, something the kids and I could explore, learn, and grow with together.  I was inspired and created boards under boards until I had a treasure trove of so many artists and activities that there was no way we could fit it all into one summer!

I thought for our first artist we would simply spend one day talking about Frida, drawing our self-portrait, and discussing our facial proportions.  The results were great, and the kids were instilled with a new creative confidence, but I was so inspired by the picture book I had found on a whim at the library that week Me, Frida, that I found myself lost in the relentlessly deep sinkhole that is Wikipedia on the subject.   In my many further Google searches, I found so many inspired activities that would better connect the kids to her and her work that I decided to do one activity a day for the rest of the week focusing on her.

And from there it blossomed into an enlightening and inspiring 6 weeks with 6 different artists.  And three years later we are back at it this summer (after taking to an engineering focus last summer).

Schedule and links posted below.

 

An Artist A Week & Objectives:

2018:

Week 1: Art Basics                           

•  Working with color
• Paying attention to detail
• Understanding light

 Week 2: Frida Kahlo

• Drawing Faces
• Understanding symbolism
• Frida’s culture

 Week 3: Claude Monet

• No black shading
• Painting in strokes as opposed to the whole picture
• Color coordination on the color wheel

Week 4: Wassily Kandinsky

• Incorporating rhythm and beat into art
• Working with shapes and colors to invoke feeling
• Working with color combinations

Week 5: Georgia O’Keeffe

• Warm and cool colors
• Advanced drawing
• Working with light

Week 6: Grandma Moses

• Drawing perspective
• Following directions
• Incorporating poetry into art

2020:

Week 1: Piet Mondrian

• Line
• Primary Colors
• Transforming as an Artist

Week 2: Pablo Picasso

• Working with Shape
• Using Multiple Perspectives
• Color and Mood

Week 3: Henri Matisse

• Exploring Fauvism
• Using Soft Edges
• Collage

Week 4: Andy Warhol

• Contrasting Colors
• Printmaking
• Pop Culture

 

Week 5: Keith Haring

• Movement
• Graffiti
• Art with a Purpose

 

Planning to try these great works?!  I want to see!!  Feel free to post all masterpieces to Instagram, call me out @Homeschool2Unschool or tag it #H2UArtRoom