Kindergarten: Henri Matisse "The Snail"
Docent Art/Meet the Artists: This is a parent-led K-2 art history program that I helped create for the Milton Public Schools. The program concentrates on six artists: Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. We currently have over 150 parent volunteers in all four elementary schools involved in this wonderful program! The following is a brief overview of the program.
Lesson Plan
Each lesson has three elements—reading a children’s book about an artist, talking about an artwork by that artist, and doing a short craft project based on the book and artwork.
Reading
A lesson begins with a short children’s book about one of the artists.
Print Review
The print review is meant to do two things: to teach that you can “read” a picture just the same way you read a book, and to reinforce the reading strategies students uses in the classroom everyday. In the Milton elementary reading program, discussions encourage students to read on three levels—text-to-self (How does the book relate to your own experience?), text-to-text (How does the book remind you of other books?), and text-to-world (How does the book remind you of bigger ideas?). In Meet the Artists, all of the discussions of works of art follow the same pattern.
The print review is meant to do two things: to teach that you can “read” a picture just the same way you read a book, and to reinforce the reading strategies students uses in the classroom everyday. In the Milton elementary reading program, discussions encourage students to read on three levels—text-to-self (How does the book relate to your own experience?), text-to-text (How does the book remind you of other books?), and text-to-world (How does the book remind you of bigger ideas?). In Meet the Artists, all of the discussions of works of art follow the same pattern.
● Artwork-to-self questions are about what students see in the prints, what it makes them feel, and what it makes them think about.
● Artwork-to-text questions are about how the print reminds them of things they just heard about in the book.
● Artwork-to-world questions are about bigger ideas, why people make the type of art they make, why certain artists are remembered the way they are, why we feel the way we do about certain pieces of art.
Project
This is a fun, creative way for the students to put together the information they learned from the reading and the print review. All of these projects involve basic materials and are designed so that all parent volunteers and all students can enjoy the process.
