If you have not been to the museum to check out the new exhibit, you are missing out!
The Dutch Italianates: 17th-century Masterpieces from Dulwich Picture Gallery is at the Museum until Jan 3, 2010. These are extraordinary works by Dutch artists that painted Italian landscapes. You might recognize some of the artists, like Pynacker, Cuyp, and Vermeer. Allow yourself plenty of time to take in each painting as there are so many details to see. It's sort of like a game of I spy, which I play with my classes. I spy two boys fishing...I spy a cow... I spy a bridge... they love to play and everyone gets a turn to spy.
I had a hard time coming up with class ideas for this since the paintings are realistic and so detailed. From what I have seen, the toddler and pre-k classes don't seem to enjoy this style of artwork as much as they enjoy the modern art and Chihuly works on the 3rd floor.
What I decided to do was talk about landscapes. We payed special attention in the exhibit to the land, sky and objects in the landscapes which happened to be a lot of animals. The kids loved finding animals and toddlers made the animal sounds and were very pleased with themselves.
In the pre-k class we used watercolors to paint our land first. Ground for our animals to stand on and then a sky for them to look up at. Prior to the class I drew and cut out horses and sheep. They used watercolor pencils to add details to the animals and then glued them to the watercolor landscapes they painted. We added final details and they were finished!
You will need:
-50 lb water color paper
-watercolors
-water and brushes
-watercolor pencils
-glue
-animal shapes
The toddler class was a bit different. We used sponges and tempera paints to create our landscapes. First I gave them green and yellow to sponge their ground. Then I gave them blue to make a sky. We finished with some brown to add trees or mountains..or DIRT, one child yelled. :) We glued our animals on top and finished with an oval mat.
