Luncheon of the boating party. (Arts responses)

I have started this term with a common activity across all year levels. We are discussing and thinking about Renoir's painting "The Luncheon of the boating party"

This painting is alive with imagery and it is easy to imagine you are a part of this lively dinner party. It has things that prompts us to ask questions like, 'why are those men wearing singlets when the man in the background has a top hat and a coat on?" "Why is the lady holding a dog on the table?"
I have asked the junior children to imagine they were there at the party and asked them to tell me what happened before and after this scene recorded in the painting.

The middle and upper classes were given a different activity asking them questions at different levels about the art work. Prior to answering the questions we had discussed the painting with reference to the types of questions featured on the work sheet. The younger grades were allowed to work collaboratively if they wanted to but the yr 6/7 were required to answer these questions independently as they have had more experience over the years answering questions such as these in class discussions at the beginning of most projects.

Year 1s meet Monet.

 

As I mentioned in my first post,I recently travelled to Europe. While I was there I visited Monet's garden and bought this book called Katie Meets the Impressionists. 

I used the book to introduce the junior primary children to the impressionists, in particular Monet. We created fields of poppies inspired by Monet's work,

These art works were created over two sessions. Following the story in session one the kids created light and dark green using their fingers to mix cool blue and cool yellow with a mid green to make a selection of light and dark greens for their background.

At the beginning of the second session we learnt about the colour wheel and warm and cool colours using this video. (Be warned the music is a tad repetitive but the little kids seemed to like it!)

We created poppies by cutting or tearing warm red and orange paper, pressing them into our palms to create a 3D effect. We talked about how we could make some poppies look closer than others by making them bigger and putting them towards the bottom of the page.

Very pretty!