Vincent van Gogh in the Classroom: Integrate Art and Integrate Fun

I cannot stress enough the importance of art in the classroom. Art gives students a great opportunity to be creative and it gives you a wonderful opportunity to integrate fun, writing, and history. First, I passed out this great outline of van Gogh's Starry Night that I found online through a Pinterest pin as a free printable from Practical Pages.

I passed out the handout with no background information. "Make this creative," I said. That was it. "This looks familiar," I heard. I was so excited to see the results. Look at this. {Um, maybe it had a little bit of a Clint Eastwood flair--that town is painted red.} I do love the colors in the sky--planets maybe?

Now, on to step 2. We studied Vincent van Gogh, and we looked at his worked. We looked at Starry Night. Then I had a new set of directions. "Recreate," I said. 

Now, you see a more van Gogh-like Starry Night, but I still love the 2nd  grade colors above. We just used crayons and then went over the pictures with a water color wash. Just get water and add a bit of water color paint (the cheap kind works) and brush quickly over the crayons.

Now, I'm big on integration. We've had a history lesson, an art lesson, even learned a new art technique. It's time for more integration fun. We added a bit of writing. It's a perfect fit to get students to work with descriptive writing. Get your kiddos to draw and recreate their own Starry Night on the top of the page. Then they write a description of the word below it. It's a great way to add directional words too. 

Enjoy!
Robin @ Sweet Tea Classroom