Learning About Artists

October’s themes for Poppin Book Nook is artists. We have had tons of fun with this theme. The girls and I decided we would do some exploring of different types of artists at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. What better way to explore artists than to take a trip where you can see many of them.

For our trip, we picked the book 13 Artists Children Should Know. It has great information about what time period the artist were in.

The book has a timeline for you to get events happening while the artist was alive plus information on where they lived, painting style, era and some fun detail about their life or families. It is such an easy way to introduce kids to artists.

Trips to the Museum of Fine Arts have become something my girls look forward to. I always try and hit major artworks as they go through. It is something I feel that since we can go we should. Our first trip ever we saw some works from Leonardo Davinci. My girls had no clue who he was and after that I decided I needed to make sure they knew about artists. We read the book Magic Tree House Fact Tracker #19: Leonardo da Vinci: A Nonfiction Companion to Magic Tree House #38: Monday with a Mad Genius. It was a great introduction to his works. The next trip we took that had his works the girls were excited about it.

Knowledge helps kids be excited and know what they are going to be seeing. I love seeing them excited about the artist there are to explore.

Our last trip was learning about another artist and visiting works of some of the others. We went to the Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer exhibit. It was great. We read books about Rembrandt and Johannes Vermeer. We looked forward to finding some of their paintings. This was an exhibit that you could not take pictures, but we got what we could. We talked through and did some drawing while we were in the room. We also took some time to take part in a writing postcards at the end.

They each picked a person they wanted to write about the exhibit. They picked friends, teachers and family to write to. We also did some drawing in our art museum coloring books. This is always a great way to keep track of what we have learned and saw.

While there we took time, to stop and see some other works that were on display from the other artist from the book. Some of them are in the same area. We played the game can you find the artist. This is a great way to keep them entertained. We were looking for Vincent Van Gogh.

When I take my girls I have given them some clue what we will be doing and seeing. Plus we do some reading online or in books about artists we will see. I have a bag that is set aside just for these trips.

Here are some things we always take with us to art museums:

• Camera with flash off- to take pictures of art work and information text
• Map of where we want to go
• Books about the artists if we have them
• Drawing pad with pencils and colored pencils with sharpener

After you have seen an exhibit see if there are books you can get about it! We have done this one several trips and love it. It is a great way to look at the pictures later. Plus you might find other artist books to get you can explore another time. or something you can just look at that is great. One book we picked up on this trip was Holland. It is a wordless book about Holland and it is wonderful to look through. You can make your own look and find while going through the book.

Art is wonderful to explore with kids! Just keep things fun and they will enjoy it.

Check out these other post about doing to museums and trip reviews:

• Museum Shape Search with Free Printable
• Things To Do When Visiting an Art Museum
• Museum of Fine Arts Boston Trip Review
• Worcester Art Museum Trip Review

Check out these other books about artisits:

Here are some of the people joining in the link up this month.

Cassie – 3Dinosaurs.com

Be sure to check out all the great post this months and link up art get posts about artists.