Great Artists

What to study here??? I knew when I began this unit that I was going to rely heavily on MaryAnn Kohl's Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters, but I wasn't sure if I should also include storybook artists in our discussion. I decided against it but if you're looking for a resource for that I highly recommend her book Storybook Art: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of 100 Great Picture Book Illustrators. They are both excellent but I decided to stick with only one instead of going back and forth.

My field trip for this unit is on Day One instead of being cumulative since I think Natalie will benefit from seeing an art gallery with real art in it before she begins to learn about these artists from reproductions of their work. I want her to understand that the books and notecards we have are NOT the real original work. After giving it much thought, here is the list of artists we'll be doing:

Week One
Introductory Field Trip
Mary Cassatt
Claude Monet
Georges-Pierre Seurat
Vincent Van Gogh
Edgar Degas

Week Two
Wassily Kandinsky
Alexander Calder
Diego Rivera
Marcel Duchamp
Jackson Pollock


Week One is Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and Week Two is Modern Art.