Ideas to use

We have Uh-Oh chores for when they are naughty, whiney, tattle-taling, etc. These are jobs like:
 
bring down hampers and sort laundry for mom
empty all garbage cans in house
clean out van                                Write letter
clean off back patio            sweep front porch
clean up driveway                        vacuum family room and play room
empty the dishwasher                    load the dishwasher
extra piano practice                        practice ABC’s/numbers
clean some glass                        clean attic
flashcards                            Mom picks
Mom picks                            clean front of fridge
tidy up mudroom                        clean front of dishwasher
clean backyard                            dust piano

We love the play of words and their meanings, the sounds and rhythms of words, the rhymes and the ideas.  These fun and nonsense poems declare,

“You can do this too!”

And that’s how we have done poetry the last while.
We make our own versions of the poems!
We illustrated or painted our poems.
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The Van Gogh picture  “Starry Night”  is one of the most popular downloads!   You can find all my other art activities and free downloads here.
 Then we washed the page with black water-colour.  This was to have a dark background between the little strokes and to give a night-time feel to the picture.  The white and yellow moon, stars and windows really stood out!
Now the girls started to fill in areas.  They sat at the computer, zoomed in and really looked to see what colours Van Gogh used.  This took some time, but already they were happy with their art as it began to look more and more like the masterpiece!

The dark greens, blacks and greys of the Cypress tree

Swirling blues, whites and greys of the sky

All done, in just an hour or so!  They really appreciated how long Van Gogh must have worked on this masterpiece, how many colours he dabbed on the canvas and how these colours created movement and mood.  They loved this lesson!

Van Gogh's Starry Night by Miss K, 10 years old

Van Gogh's Starry Night by Miss L 7 years old

Here are some links I used to prepare this lesson:
artprojectsforkids.org – Kathy Barbro’s delightful art lesson ideas!
vangoghmuseum.nl – colouring pages of several of van Gogh’s masterpieces.  (I drew my own of the “Starry Night”)
Web Gallery of Art – for pictures of masterpieces