Take One Picture

Every year the National Gallery in London runs its "Take One Picture" scheme for primary schools. The idea is that one of the paintings from its collection is chosen to be used both in art and other curriculum areas leading to a display of submitted work at its annual "Take One Picture" exhibition. This year the gallery has chosen one of my favourites: J. M. W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire of 1839.

Full details of this year's scheme, which runs until November 2008, can be found on this website. The "Across the Curriculum" section contains a number of cross-curricular ideas that have been used successfully in the past as well as some examples of the artworks produced by schools. The gallery offers a one-day Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course to help teachers get to grips with the possibilities offered by the painting.

The Getty Museum

The Education section of the website run by the Getty Museum in California has a number of promising areas including some lesson plans, resources, games and their TeacherArtExchange listserv (as mentioned in a previous post). You can get to the site by clicking here. The games and lesson plans cover more than just art so it might be worth looking through for ideas.

Claude Monet

This week, to tie in with looking at water-themed topics in numeracy and geography we are going to be doing some watercolour paintings based on the French Impressionist Claude Monet's Water Lily series of paintings, which he completed at his house in Giverny in the last 30 years or so of his life. While looking for some pictures to give to the children to inspire them to produce their own water lily paintings, I came across a wonderful website with images of Monet's paintings. I have added it to my links but you can also get to it by clicking here.

The images are organised by time, place and theme so it is very easy to find anything you want and all of them seem detailed enough to reproduce. I just love the way the pictures constantly change to give you an idea what is on each linked page. If you go to the site's home page you will find a number of other links about the painter, his life and works. Check it out.

If you want ideas on what to do as an activity, some have been submitted to the Getty Museum's TeacherArtExchange website and you can get to it here.

kidsart

I've added a new link, this time to kidsart, which is a non-profit making website where kids and schools can have galleries to showcase their art. The link will actually take you to their own links and resources page, which is worth checking out as their tips are short, to the point and very child-friendly.