Category: Hands-on Learning

I’ve been teaching Van Gogh to my little ones recently, beginning with his painting of the “Bedroom in Arles.”

For his biography, I picked up a great resource at our book fair– Van Gogh: My Sticker Art Gallery. His pieces of art are stickers that can be added to the gallery spread telling about that period of the artist’s life.

I emphasized three facts about Van Gogh our first week: he grew up in Holland; his little brother and best friend’s name was Theo; he liked to paint poor, hard workers. We also did a picture study of Van Gogh’s “Potato Eaters” painting. In other words, we looked at the hands of the workers and described them; looked at the room and the lighting and discussed what that told us about the people; looked at their meal and discussed why they were eating potatoes.

For our picture study of the “Bedroom,” I had two main activities. First, the kids colored pictures of the “Bedroom,” noticing colors and details. I had read about the painting earlier in my prep and brought out a few key ideas, like the fact that he painted with colors he liked (rather than the actual colors that he saw), colors that reflected the mood of his room–peaceful and happy.

They both did an awesome job with this, much better than I even anticipated. My four year old especially enjoyed this activity; it really appealed to his detailed personality.

Our second aspect of the study was from Spot the Differences Art Masterpieces. In this activity, the kids compared the original piece to a “fraud.” I really liked how this activity is subtly training them what to look for in a picture. For instance, the colors of the details and the personality of the artist (simplistic and very orderly vs. messy or disordered)–simple concepts right on their level.

During our second week, I ran across an idea on the website Art Explorer that suggested making a bedroom shadow box. It was so much fun, and an extremely effective way of teaching Van Gogh and his self-expression in his paintings.

Supplies: You’ll need a shoe box or something similar. I did not have a shoe box and had to improvise with lids from a box of cards and pieces of cardstock. You’ll also need paint, paintbrushes, and magazine pictures of furnishings.

Day 1: Because my kids are so young, I had pages of furniture pictures already torn from magazines and let them choose from the stack.

I tried not to intervene too much, since the whole idea of the project was to create a “bedroom” that was a self-portrait. It really was fun to see how much the “bedrooms” and their furnishings told of their personalities. I even let the Little One add a dog to her bedroom. After all, placing a large dog in the midst of the room did tell a lot about her. Though I did draw the line when my son wanted three beds in his room in case “the neighbors wanted to spend the night”; I did, however, let him choose a set of bunk beds.

Day 2: Taking a sharpie, I drew a box around the pictures that each of them wanted to use, making it easier for them to cut them out on their own. Little One still needed some help, but my son did most of the cutting himself.

Day 3: The kids chose the colors for their walls and floor, then painted away. I used plastic bags for their art aprons and a piece of Pallete art paper (similar to wax paper) that I had left over from college art classes. We really survived with very little incident.

This was the extent of the mess at the end of the day.

Prep for Day 4: Meanwhile, I pasted the magazine pictures to cardstock. Then, I cut out the furnishings once more, leaving about a 1/2″ of space at the bottom. The extra would be folded over and glued to the floor of the bedrooms to make a 3-D effect.

Day 4: Once the bedrooms were dry, we got out our furnishings and the hot glue gun. I pasted the pieces in where they directed, with only a little bit of suggestion and intervention. Then, with our completed projects, we had a little “show and tell.” They each presented their rooms (why they chose the pieces for their rooms), we got pictures, and then we closed with a short review of Van Gogh.

It was a great finish to our study, and I can’t wait to launch into our next Van Gogh painting study. Here’s a close-up of the end results.

Our third week of teaching Van Gogh, we studied his self-portraits. I pulled out my Usborne First Book of Art and read the pages on “Faces” and self-portraits. We looked at Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s painting “Summer” which is a painting of fruits and vegetables made to look like a person’s profile.

So we did a funny fruit face of our own.

I cut out a couple of big faces that I found in some magazine adds, plus lots of fruit and vegetable and flower pictures from magazines. Then, we matched the shapes of the fruit to the shapes of the facial features—and did a lot of laughing!

My final week of teaching Van Gogh, we finally made it to his sunflowers. I have been looking forward to this craft all summer long.

Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings are probably among his most recognizable, and this fun craft is done in a style reminiscent of his. I got the idea, once again, from my Usborne First Book of Art.

First, you’ll need to cut the sponges into petal shapes. I did one for each color because I didn’t want to have to worry about rinsing before each layer.

Second, you’ll need yellow, orange, and green paint. Add a little (emphasis on little) flour to the paint to thicken it.

Third, layer the yellow and then the orange petals in a circle. Add the green “leaves.”

Last, I got out an assortment of colors and let the kids fingerpaint the centers of the flowers.

And the result, our own Van Gogh sunflowers!

I was really pleased with this craft. Not only was it simple for them to do, but it really was pretty controlled when it came to the mess. And the result was awesome.

We’ve had a great time covering the life and work of Van Gogh in a littles-friendly way. I love including fine art in our homeschool studies, and teaching Van Gogh has been a great place to start.