Last year art sort of fell out of the gate. I had good plans and good intentions - we feel that it is important for the kids to learn both how to appreciate art and how to create their own messy masterpieces. I had decided to take the angle of reading about and looking at an important artwork, then trying to use some of the techniques on our own in a kid-friendly way. I've got a fancy degree, i lived in Europe for a while and saw all sorts of great art - I could do this, right? So I found a great book on art appreciation for kids and we did fantastic art projects - for about a month. Because the problem is, this is really hard - especially for someone for whom creativity does not come naturally. The planning of these art lessons started to take up an enormous amount of time, and so they fell by the wayside. I figured since the kids draw approximately 97452 pictures every day, that counted for something, and I didn't feel too badly about not having a "formal" art curriculum.
But this year I was determined to give it another try, and I realized that I needed help (like, preferably completely spelled-out-for-me plans). I found a great little book called Discovering Great Artists, and it has been a lifesaver. Each lesson talks about a different artist and a specific technique they used. Then there are step-by-step directions for the kids to try it on their own, and even pictures of kid-created artwork (to help manage parental expectations!). There's an index with all of the art projects sorted by time to set up, time to complete, difficulty, and materials needed. Don't have clay? Well, it's easy to find non-clay-needing projects. Know I'm going to have a really busy week? I can pick a project that the kids can do largely on their own. We are doing art this year!
And so our first official field trip of the year was to the National Art Gallery in Washington, DC. SweetPotato has been learning all about shapes and we read a couple of books about finding shapes in art, so this was "her" field trip, and her job was to find all sorts of shapes for us. Sprout and SweetPea will get their own special field trips later in the year.
A trip downtown is always a treat for the kids and we had to go to lunch, pet the police horse, and get very excited about crossing busy streets. Working in DC and mostly just trying to get in and out as quickly as possible, I forget how exciting all of it is for little ones.
We went to the sculpture garden first, where the kids could get out some energy before being told "shhhhh" for two hours in the museum. We had to play duck-duck-goose on the circle-of-chairs sculpture:`
And the girls were mystified by Typewriter Eraser, Scale X:
The fountain and green space were a hit:
When we got to the gallery proper, the littles were surprisingly fascinated. It was a good lesson to me not to sell them short. SweetPea loved talking about what all of the women and girls in the Impressionist paintings were thinking about, and she discovered that the ideal place to try out some ballet moves was in an empty gallery of Chinese vases.
Doodle loved the fountain best, and was decidedly unimpressed by Monet.
The museum staff were unbelievably helpful and friendly, and went out of their way to talk with the kids and help them have a great day. They were awestruck when they were asked to be "deputy guards" and "make sure that no one was touching the art!"
When we left we took some time for them to run around on the National Mall and get their crazies out before heading home. They started a game of tag that ended in giggles, a pile of kids and shouts of "look, mom, we're a triple-decker!" I love my brother and SSHH loves his, but we agree that we just don't remember scenes like this from when we were little. I don't know how it happened, but the kids truly are each other's best friends. They invent crazy games and have inside jokes and squabble and fight and take care of each other and it's really wonderful to watch. So despite all the wonderful things we saw in the gallery, this was the best picture of the day:
