A Great Way to Get Your Kids Talking About Art

I’m offline this week but I’m re-posting old posts.  I forgot about this activity I posted about on October 9, 2008, and was really excited to stumble on it again!  Hopefully it sounds fun to you too!

I just read this really great idea and thought it would be a great way to get kids interested in looking at and studying art.

Here is what you do:

You pick a painting to study and discuss.  Here, you can use one of my favorites by Vermeer!

Then you get about ten pieces of paper and write a phrase that begins a statement about the scene on each piece.

For example, write

The name of the person in this picture is ________________

This person just finished ______________

This person is thinking about __________________

Next, this person will ___________________

What we can’t see in this picture is ________________

It’s too bad that _____________________

The good news is ______________________

Soon this person will leave to go to ____________________

and so on!

Then, put the pieces of paper face down.  Each person takes a turn choosing a paper and finishes the blank by making up a story about the painting.

What a great way to get your kids to take time to look at a painting!