Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book is exactly what it says it is; hands on activities related to a great artist for children. I'm a Trivium Classical Education/Charlotte Mason Classical Education hybrid homeschooler. I bought this book to include hands on ideas as we study the Early Modern Era (1600-1850) using Story of the World as our history spine. ( I wish I'd heard about it when planning for the Medieval Period last year.) The activities themselves are simple and use easy to get supplies. I appreciate that each one is designed to emphasize something in particular the great artist was known for. For example, the two activities related to Rembrandt are Making Faces and Shadowy Faces. The child experiences focusing on these two things by drawing the face of someone sitting next to a spotlight or unshaded lamp and sketching as best they can facial features and shadows after careful observation. The other has the child doing self portraits of different expressions in the mirror. Each activity includes a short, simple paragraph explaining that Rembrandt was well known for doing each of these things very well. After having done the activity in Discovering the Great Artists (DGA) the child will know what to look FOR in a painting or sketch by that particular artist and have some experience with actually doing a little of it. This book is about the experience, not the study. It does that well. If you want to do more of a study about the artist and his or her paintings then you'll need other resources. There are a few small black and white images of masterworks in the book but they're for reference, not for study. You'll need to supplement with something else in addition. Mike Venezia does a series of short, simple biographies of artists and their works and historical figures that would fit this age and ability range. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Mike+venezia There are places online and many books that have full color images of masterworks for the child to look at. Fine Art Stickers of each artist and fine art coloring books by Dover Publications can also dovetail nicely with this book. Amazon has them here for a good price. For those of you who want to work this book into lesson plans, the authors had you in mind. There are several different charts and indexes depending on how the adult wants to organize and use these activities. There's the standard alphabetical by artist name, a list of each great artist's birthday organized by month, a list organized by art techniques, another by great art styles, a materials index, and an index of artist terms and their definitions. The Chart of Contents at the beginning includes the page number, the artist's name, lifetime, the name of the art activity, the artist's style, art technique, child level, and adult prep time. This is particularly useful for people incorporating these activities into a lesson plan based on a history spine. They're in chronological order. If you're studying the Ancients (10,000BCE-500 CE) skip this book. There aren't any here. If you're studying The Medieval Period/Middle Ages (500-1600) There are 15 artists that fit that time period. If you're studying The Early Modern Era (1600-1850) there are 8 artists that fit that time period. If you're studying The Late Modern Era (1850-present day) there are about 56 artists that fit that time period. The only downside to this book is the shape and binding. Being long and bound on the narrow side it's harder for those of us who use a 36 week file folder system for assignments. I had my local Staples cut the spine off and 3 whole punch it for me along the bottom of the pages so I can put each one in the file for the week we actually do it. When we're done with each, I can put them back in the 3 ring binder with the pages we aren't using this year. It's a little awkward to flip through them in the binder this way but not such a hassle that I would discourage someone from buying the book. NOTE* If you're using it with Story of the World (SOTW) 3 here are the chapters I've aligned them to. I took into account the artist's birth country, country he lived in and historical events in his lifetime for placement as best I could. I plan to update this review next summer when I'm finished with my planning the Late Modern Period. SOTW 3/Great Artist & DGA page number Ch. 2 Protestant Rebellions/ Rembrandt 28 & 29 Ch. 5 Warlords of Japan/ Hokusai 34 Ch. 16 Russia Looks West/ Linnaeus 30 Ch. 17 The English in India/ Gainsborough 31 Ch. 19 Fighting Over North America/ Blake 32 Ch. 27 A Changing World/ Constable 33 Ch. 30 The End of Napoleon/ Courbet 36 Ch. 32 The Opened West/ Audubon 35 UPDATED: 7/8/15 These are my lessons plans to coordinate with Story of the World 4 By Bauer. Since there are so many artists in that era (1850-1994) to choose from, I had to narrow it down. 1. I looked for Fine Art Stickers available here at amazon for about $1.50 for a book that have 16 different paintings by each artist listed in Discovering Great Artists in the Chart of Contents on pgs. 8-10. I found and ordered: Cassat, Cezanne, Chagall, Dali, Degas, Gauguin, Kahlo, Kandinsky, Monet, Picasso, Renoir, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gough. That's enough for 3-4 artists per quarter. 2. I sorted them by nationality and matched them with the chapters and the individual reading in each chapter that related to historical events in that nation. There were so many French artists that a few of them had to be placed at random in the last quarter when none of the historical events matched the artist's nationality. Sometimes life happens. The numbers after the artist's name indicates the page numbers from Discovering Great Artists that have the instructions for an activity related to that artist. Ch. 3 British Invasions-The Great Game (Degas 40-41, French) Ch. 5 The American Civil War- After the Civil War (Cassat 44, American) Ch. 9 Two More Empires, Two Rebellions- The Dutch East Indies (Van Gogh 46-47, Dutch) Ch. 14 Two Czars, Two Emperors; The Next to Last Czar of Russia (Chagall 76, Jewish Russian) Ch. 15 Small Countries with Large Invaders, The Spanish-American War (Picasso 69-71, Spanish) Ch. 20 Revolution in the Americas...War in the World,The Mexican Revolution (Kahlo 80-81, Mexican) Ch. 21 A Revolution Begins & a Great War Ends, The Russian Revolution (Kandinsky 60, Russian) Ch. 27 Civil War & Invasion; Red Spain, Black Spain, a King & a General (Dali 78, Spanish) Ch. 28 The Second World War, The 3-War War (Monet 39, French) Ch. 31 Western Bullies & American Money, The Marshall Plan (Seurat 54, French) Ch. 33 Communism in Asia, Ho Chi Minh & the Viet Minh (Renoir 45, French) (Cezanne 48, Gaugin 51 and Toulouse-Lautrec 52-53, French) Randomly placed in the 4th quarter as there are no chapters about France.