More Monet

In this toddler class with children from 15 months to 3 years we created our own version of Monet's Water Lilies by using tissue paper and glue. Toddlers always like paint, but I wanted to use a different medium and show the kids something new.

Yesterday I had two classes at the Museum and what a wonderful group of kids it was! I read this fun book by Lois Ehlert called, Planting a Rainbow.
I love Ehlert's books-she is the illustrator as well and I like her bold fun style. We talked about Monet's garden and the colors and things we might find there. We looked at another book I brought showing Monet's work and talked about Water Lilies. In the Museum we found garden scenes and made out way to Monet's work.

In the classroom we used
-11x14 sheet of medium weight watercolor paper
-bleeding tissue paper precut into shapes
-elmer's glue mixed with water-about 1 to 1 ratio
-large flat paintbrushes

The night before I cut a variety of bleeding tissue paper into shapes. Blues and yellow into squares and rectangles. Greens into lily pads and pinks and purples into lily flowers.


Each student had a work station with their own paper, tissue paper, glue and brush.

I had kids first brush their paper with the glue mixture. Then they applied their blue/yellow squares for water. Then lily pads, then flowers-adding glue inbetween to help new layer hold.

We had so much fun. Here are some of their beautiful creations!

Little Water Lilies

Before I get started I am watching the best documentary right now about 3 men running across the Sahara Desert. It is fascinating. They are at day 63 right now-totalling already running 58 marathons. Amazing what the human body can do.

About Monet though. I had a wonderful class with kids ages 3-5. We talked about Monet and his garden. We spoke about what might be in a garden-flowers, trees, and ponds. What are in some ponds? Lily pads. We talked about frogs living in the pond jumping on the lily pads. The kids were excited to get started.

I had everyone set up with a palette of blue, purple and white paint. We talked about filling up our paper with water so the frogs would have a lot of water to swim and jump around in. They filled the paper up nice and we walked through the Museum to look at the impressionist part of the exhibit. The children seemed to enjoy it but were ready to return to the classroom to finish our paintings.





Now I go around and give everyone green paint. They add lily pads. When they are almost finished, I give them a small brush and red paint. They add flowers and are finished! I think everyone did a great job. I love to see how all the pieces are so different. We took time when everyone was finished to walk around and look at what everyone did. So much fun. I am looking forward to a different spin on this class with my toddler class in 2 weeks.





Just to touch again on the doc, Running the Sahara. It just ended. Wow. 111 days over 4,300 miles. Amazing.

Preparing for Monet

When I return from vacation the new exhibit will be at the Museum. While there are many more artists in this exhibit, Monet is the first of the artists from this exhibit that I have a class about.

In preparation for some of the classes revolving around this exhibit, I checked out some books from the library to share with my boys as well as the class.

I think some of Monet's most recognized work would probably be any of the water lily series. The last years of his life, Monet rarely left home and only painted scenes from his garden and his lily pond. I am so excited to share his work with my children. I wrote several papers discussing Monet and the water lily series in college after seeing an exhibit (Monet at Giverny:Masterpieces from the Musee Marmottan) at the Albright-Knox in Buffalo many years ago. I am moved by his work and seeing it in person is overwhelming and extremely moving.

Here are some of the Monet books I am going to have laid out for the kids.

I have many of the Metropolitan Museum of Art books for my boys and they are really good books if you have not seen this series before. While most of these books are not necessarily aged for my classes the kids can certainly look at the pictures and talk about what they see. I sometimes think people do not give credit to kids for what they can accomplish and understand.

Stay tuned for the wonderful artwork we are going to create!