Art Cart: Van Gogh

I have the pleasure of being one of the Moms in N's class room who teaches Art Cart (AC) once a month. The other Mom and I take turns heading up each month's theme. The Mom who doesn't head it up, helps the other Mom with set up, etc. I've lead Art Cart a few times already this year, but haven't gotten around to blogging about it. I will do that in the near future.

This month, we learned about Van Gogh. I read a book to the kids called "Katie and the Sunflowers." It's the cutest book about Katie's visit to an art gallery with her Grandma. Her Gma falls asleep on a bench while Katie runs around the gallery. Katie ends up following a puppy in and out of several paintings (mostly by Van Gogh). She's going in and out of the painting in an attempt to catch the puppy because he is carrying the Sunflowers from Van Gogh's Sunflower painting. Katie ends up catching the puppy and puts the flowers back in their original painting.

When we were done reading the book I showed the kids a poster of Van Gogh's Sunflowers painting and we talked about Van Gogh's technique. Then I walked them through the steps to make their own Sunflower painting using petal shaped sponges and paints. Each student got a 12x18 piece of card stock paper with a vase already drawn on the paper. The first thing the kids did was to write their names on the vases on their pictures just like Van Gogh did and then they got to work painting! I wish I would have had taken my camera with me because their paintings turned out so nice! The bright colors were so refreshing on a gloomy, cloudy day. So fun!

Below is a picture I took of the practice painting I did.