Works of Art

Teaching Pre K-8, Mar 2005 by Meagher, Sandy

Round out your celebration of Youth Art Month with these artful book picks

Art is a major component of elementary school curriculum. Just about every project or research report includes an art-related choice. A recent social studies research assignment at my school included suggestions like: Draw a map of your state and include major land forms. Make an advertisement for a magazine for tourists with the information you have found. Design a new license plate. Design a flag for homes to display about their country or state. Make a travel brochure.

To support students with their research and artwork, I referred them to a terrific series called How to Draw Pennsylvania's Sights and Symbols: A Kid's Guide to Drawing America by Melody S. Mis (PowerKids Press, 2002, ISBN 0-823-96094-3) which features an illustrated list of drawing terms, state fact list, information about a painter whose work celebrates the natural beauty of the featured state, red highlighting of each new step in a drawing and websites for further information.

Getting in style

This year, middle school students read biographies and designed paintings in the style of the great artists. An outstanding series that I suggested they check out is Artist Biographies (Enslow Publishers) which can be ordered via the publisher's website at www.enslow.com Artists highlighted in this series include Georgia O'Keefe, Andy Warhol, Edward Hopper, John Singer Sargent, Norman Rockwell and Willem de Kooning. Each book includes an excellent timeline, glossary and websites.

Two truly outstanding biographies that were written with wonderful narratives are Michelangelo by Diane Stanley, (HarperCollins, 2000, ISBN 0-688-15085-3) and Tallchief by Maria Tallchief with Rosemary Wells (Puffin, 2001, ISBN: 0-142-30018-7).

Speaking of great artists, our fifth graders do a great job of writing and illustrating their own books and then reading them to third grade students. Loreen Leedy must have had them in mind when she wrote her wonderful book Look At My Book: How Kids Can Write and Illustrate Terrific Books (Holiday House, 2004, ISBN 0-8234-1590-2). This is a great addition for both teachers and students and in fact, could be the textbook for the teachers and kids for their whole project.

Artistic science

The four seasons are always part of science curriculum in primary grades. Our second grade teachers incorporated Henri Matisse's art and drawing with scissors. I thought it was amazing that the students could identify his work from then on right away. The perfect book for the project was Henri Matisse: Drawing With Scissors by Jane O'Connor (Grossett & Dunlop, 2002, ISBN 0-448-42519-X).

A great science book that's infused with art is Ecosystems by Jim Pipe (Aladdin Books, 2005, ISBN 1-932-79950-8). The outstanding feature of this book is that there are two symbols used throughout - a magnifying glass for tips on how to observe wildlife in your local area and a paintbrush that contains a wildlife activity or project that you can try yourself.

The masters

Introducing books about the masters can be done in art class and the two following books are really outstanding. Cave Paintings to Picasso by Henry M. Sayre, (Chronicle Books, 2004, ISBN: 0-8118-3767-X) features art from Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas that is organized chronologically and includes visual timelines and a glossary of art terms. Can You Find It, Too? by Judith Cressy (Abrams, 2004, ISBN: 0-810-95046-4) asks us to find objects in 20 works of art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These books allow us to look really closely and in doing so, learn so much more about the paintings. The basic concept used in this book is "Find some details you can count, then challenge someone else to find them. The fun is in the looking." I think we could do a lot with students using this idea.

Guest artists

As I'm sure you know, having a real "live" author visit with your students is just such a wonderful experience. Tedd Arnold was our guest author/illustrator recently and what a great person he is! Before he arrived, the children read his books, Huggly's Pizza (Scholastic, 2000, ISBN 0-439-13498-6), Parts (Puffin, 2000, ISBN: 0-140-56533-7) and many more.

Our art teacher really inspired students with Tedd's illustrations in the book of poems, Giant Children by Brod Bagert (Dial, 2002, ISBN: 0-803-72556-6). Everyone was asked to illustrate themselves as giant children and we placed these spectacular creatures all around our school - each one had its own personality just like our students. As a result of this project and Tedd's fantastic presentation, his books were constantly taken out of the library and students' continued to work on their art projects.

Sandy Meagher is the Library Department Chairperson and School Librarian in the Wayne Highlands School District, Honesdale, PA.

E-mail: Sandy@TeachingK-8.com