The Van Gogh finger painting project was a really fun activity that I could see early elementary school students enjoying. We started out the activity by watching a video on Vincent Van Gogh. The video talked about his life and his artwork, especially his painting "Starry Night". After the video, the students were to pick up a sheet of white paper (12"x18") and tape it down to their desks. For younger students, you could prepare this activity ahead of time and have this already done and ready for the students. The students were then told that they should make their own Vincent Van Gogh inspired painting. The teacher should tell the students that they will need to have something in the background, middle ground, and foreground of their painting. Next, the students are to get their paint (red, yellow, blue, white and black) and that they were going to use their fingers in order to create the effect that Van Gogh had in his paintings. The students would be working on making the painting flow together like Van Gogh's, but also working on mixing colors on their paper.
An extension activity that the students could do with this project would be to to have the students write about Vincent Van Gogh and his life, in order to incorporate Language Arts. The students could take what they learned in the video and do one of three writing ideas: (a) create an obituary for Vincent Van Gogh, (b) design a newspaper article that interviews Van Gogh, or (c) get in a group and act out Vincent Van Gogh's life (a short preview). For younger students, this activity would probably be very short and to the point. For older students, they would have to do more research on Vincent Van Gogh and come up with more information about him and his art than the video offered.
No comments:
Post a Comment