Non-Fiction+Books

Artsy activities motivated by books found in the Non-Fiction shelves of the Media Center....folk tales, fairy tales, math, artists, illustrators, etc
__**I Spy Shapes in Art**__ by Lucy Micklethwait does exactly that. Various shapes are highlighted in different works of art.

Suggested activity: Take a picture of a place in school or the community the children are familiar with. Have them open the picture in a Paint program or MS Word document. Use the drawing tools to outline and label different shapes they see.

Also by Lucy Micklethwait is __**I SPY - An Alphabet in Art**.__ Works by prominent artists such as Botticelli, Picasso, Renoir, Hockney, and others are featured. The text is always, "I spy with my little eye something that begins with ___". Kids love the series of I Spy books and this one also exposes them to art. The answers are listed at the end along with the artist's name (birth/death date) and the location (museum or collection) of the painting.

The North Carolina Museum of Art has created an alphabet of artworks and artifacts in its collection. This can be seen at: http://ncartmuseum.org/student/directoryb/index2.html A short verse accompanies each letter. You may use these questions to send the children on an artistic scavenger hunt...

__ After reading Caldecott winner, __Snowflake Bentley__, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin your students will love to create their own snowflakes at these sites. [|Snowflake Designer]allows children to see the snowflake design as they cut the triangular paper with different sizes of "scissors".

In the [|Make-a-Flake]site students cut the triangular piece of paper. They may preview and continue cutting. When their masterpiece is complete it may be saved in the gallery.

Your students will be as excited as __Linnea in Monet's Garden__ when they get the [|Kid's Scoop on Monet] at the National Gallery of Art Kid's Zone. Linnea can't believe she gets to be in Monet's house, sit on his steps, walk across his Japanese Bridge, and see the flowers in the gardens he loved to paint. In Monet's blue kitchen she sees lots of Delft style tiles. Children can create their own tiles in the [|Dutch Dollhouse interactive kitchen]. Don't tell them there is a symmetry lesson here... (Monet's water lilies are also featured in You Can't Take a Balloon Into The Metropolitan Museum__ in the Picture Book suggestion of activities)