Approaching Art Through Van Gogh (LS-ES-324)

This Learning Scenario was created by Leticia Gil Ramos, a Spanish teacher working with Pre Primary teachers (5-6 years old).

Integrating Kindergarten students into Art

Everybody knows how important is Art in our lives. This project is aimed at 5-6 years old students who are learning how Art can improve their imagination and feelings. The main axis of this project is the promotion of active learning through the use of Art and ICT, that renew educational practices in preschool age. The educational process is emerging as a new framework, which attracts students’ interest, turning traditional lessons into more attractive and entertaining. The creation of appropriate learning opportunities will take place by using Art with many resources we can obtain from Europeana.

How Art can help me to be happy

With this learning scenario, we want our students to begin working in cooperative learning trying to express their feelings through art. They will develop their oral and plastic expressions.

The final result of the activity will be pictures created by children with different techniques based on the main piece of arts of Van Gogh which will be carried out cooperatively with the students giving voice and creating a story from their own pictures.

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Development of the project

Children will be involved in some problems related to discovering an artist who can change their way of showing their feelings. Different activities were made:

• Presentation: What we know and what we want to learn about the artist. Children will receive a letter with a famous painting from Van Gogh. We will start to talk about the famous painter and we will write in a big paper what we know about him and what we will want to learn.

• Looking for information: An informative note will be sent to families informing them of the start of a new project and asking for their collaboration in the search for information about the painter. We advise them to use Europeana to obtain resources. Children will write these notes.

• Finding resources in Europeana: All together will look for information on the internet, Europeana will be the fundamental resource from which we will obtain “Van Gogh’s self-portrait”. We will put the painting on the whiteboard and children will be able to talk about the famous painter.

• Creating our own self-portrait showing how we feel: Children will create their own self-portrait as Van Gogh did years ago. Children will need their own mirror and some painting resources. They will share with their friends how they feel and why.

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Conclusion

Through this project, students will be able to channel their feelings through the creation of different works of art, being aware of the techniques employed by the painter Van Gogh and what he wanted to convey to us with his paintings.

Would you like to know more about this learning scenario? You can download it below:

Did you find this learning scenario interesting? You might also like:

• All about art  by Anastasia Polychroniadou
• Art Mash Up – 3Rs (Remix, Reuse, Recombine) by Katalin Lorincz
• Symmetrical ART  by Rafael Montero

The featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana Collections and belongs to the public domain.